Page 29 - Mastering SolidWorks

Introduction

SolidWorks is an immense topic, especially if you are new to the software. There is a lot to know
and a lot to write about. While I have made every effort to be complete in this book, I’m sure
there are some niche topics that have gone untreated. In this edition, I rely more on video
introductions for each chapter to demonstrate some of the basic concepts.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is primarily meant as an encyclopedic desk reference for SolidWorks Standard users
who want a more thorough understanding of the software and process than can be found in
other available documentation. As such, it is not necessarily intended to be a guide for beginners,
although it has elements of that. Nor is it necessarily intended as a classroom guide, but it could
be used for that as well. This book will take you into areas of technical application where training
classes don’t go—and into best practices you won’t find anywhere else.

What You Will Learn
To keep the size of the book down, I have tried to avoid topics found only in SolidWorks
Professional or Premium, although some discussion of these topics was unavoidable at times.
While the book does point out limitations, bugs, and conceptual errors in the software, in
every case this is meant to give the reader a more thorough understanding of the software and
how it is applied in the context of everyday design or engineering practice. I believe that you
don’t know how much you can do until you find the boundary—so I frequently push past the
limits of the software.
The overall goal of this book is not to fill your head with facts, but to help you think like the
software, so that you can use the tool as an intuitive extension of your own process. As your
modeling projects get more complex, you will need to have more troubleshooting and worka-
round skills available to you. Along with best practice recommendations, these are the most
compelling reasons to study this book.
This is not a book about machine design, nor industrial design, nor even engineering. This is a
book about how to use SolidWorks as a CAD design documentation tool. There is some assump-
tion that you are familiar with general design and engineering practice and terminology.
Thank you for your interest.