This Christmas Buy Knowledge

Buy some books that will make you work smarter this holiday season.
Someone said once that a smart person is that one that invests more money in things that will go inside his head than in things that stay outside. Now is your turn to buy some knowledge for yourself or for anyone you know.
The main CAD programs have several Books that will let you improve the way you work with them. Although books are never as good as practice, practice and practice, they are a good reference to have in hand to learn new features of a program. Here are some of the ones that seemed the best deals for me this end of 2008 for some of the programs you might be trying to

AutoCAD
Beginner - AutoCAD 2009 for Dummies

The "for Dummies" series with its plain language let you learn the basics of almost anything. A great deal for its price (around $16 / £10). Sometimes as I often write ere we overlook the basics of programs missing some fundamental tricks to work smarter. here you´ll find a lot.

or

Expert - AutoCAD 2009 Bible:

The Bible by Ellen Filkenstein has been for years a reference Book for those who want to go deep in their AutoCAD Knowlege. Even the latest 2009 version is quite affordable (the book sells for around $30 or £20) and has plenty of knowledgeable tips. All you need to know (besides what you read here) about AutoCAD.

or


SketchUp:
Beginner - SketchUp For Dummies

With about 250 pages to get introduced to all the basic SketchUp features and some more to start using some other intermediate procedures.I think the "for Dummies" series can lack sometimes a bit of seriousness and the language is not always very clear, but in this release they did a pretty good Job.

or

Advanced - SketchUp Advanced Tutorials

Bonnie Roskes publishes her own books. (See a previous posts we talked about the books for kids). This one is the one addressed to the ones who want to know more about this fantastic software. Here I want to stress again that there is no better training than practice. But buying a book doesn´t hurt anyone I guess.



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SketchUp: Teach it to your kids

A set of books to introduce SketchUp to the little ones.If you want your kids to become architects in the future or simply want them to do something more useful than playing shot'em'up games, maybe you should consider buying this set of books.
Author Bonnie Roskes has published a series of books to learn SketchUp, but they have the peculiarity of being intended for kids.
The series start with ModelMetricks Basics Series, a series of 4 books for the beginner kid. These are the 4 books of this first series:
1.- Home, Sweet Home, on this first book kids (age 8 to 15) can learn how to model different types of houses and color them. (Mac version of the Book here)
2.- Strange Buildings, probably the best of the whole series, kids can design, factories, towers, curved buildings in a very funny way.(Mac version of the Book here)
3.- Kids as Architects, on the third book kids take the role of the architect to design really surprisingly shaped buildings. (Mac version of the Book here)
4.- Go to your Room, the fourth book will allow children to design their own bedroom.( Mac version of the book here)

There is an intermediate and advanced series of the books as well, so if your kids love this first series you know what's the next present!
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Learn SketchUp: SketchUp for Dummies and SketchUp Bible

A couple of books to learn or improve your SketchUp skills.I will start today my section of Book reviews and recommendations. Part of it is from my own knowledge, some other stuff will be based on comments of people I know who has those books. Today I´ll just point some books to learn or to improve your abilities with SketchUp
The first one is for the beginner. A great book for those who are just starting to learn SketchUp is SketchUp for Dummies. With about 250 pages to get introduced to all the basic SketchUp features and some more to start using some other intermediate procedures.
I think the "for Dummies" series can lack sometimes a bit of seriousness and the style of writing can be a bit confusing to get the information you want. But in this release they did a pretty good Job. The information is easy to follow, and the tutorials are good and you´ll learn some stuff that is not that easy to find on the online videos and tutorials. Yo can buy a hard copy in Amazon starting at $13.56 or a Kindle digital copy for only $9.99

The second one is a new release that looks like it might become a reference book for all SketchUp users. The Book is officially called "Google SketchUp and SketchUp Pro Bible", but my guess is that soon the SU community will know it as the SketchUp Bible. In this case you can for now only preorder a copy in Amazon for $26.39. Again, in this case I don't know if the book is good or not since it hasn't been released, it´s all from the guts in this case, but I am pretty good at guessing :P.
It comes with a CD with tutorials and reference files. I am planning to buy it soon, if you buy it before, please don´t hesitate to leave a comment about it. Thanks!
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