AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD LT 2009: No Experience Required,   ISBN:9780470260586

Customer Rating: 

I never received the book - so you get the lowest rating.
Will have to cancel payment also

Customer Rating: 

Due to a change of job last year I was required to quickly learn AutoCAD, so I purchased this book and a copy of AutoCAD LT2009. I knew nothing whatsoever about the subject, but I learn fast from books and this one got rave reviews and it deserves them. McFarlane covers virtually everything from setting up the software and the screen and drawing the first line to multi-color layering and setup templates that I did not even know what they were until I read this book.
The book is a real step by step and even gives you the chance to practice more or move on at the end of each chapter. There are great downloads of each stage so if you only want to practice a little but need the result for the next chapter it is there. My opinion is that after 20 -40 hours using this book you can get to the stage where only repeated practice and application will take you further.
There are very few errors in the book although some practical advice on the fact that fonts that start with an @ sign are for vertical writing and are listed in the list of fonts before normal horizontal fonts would have prevented a frustrating 30 minutes wondering why my text wouldn't write horizontal and there is no clear explanation of the practical differences of "Thaw/Freeze" vs "On/Off" or why you would use one vs the other, but these are minor and overall this book is great.
After saying all that you are probably wondering why I didn't give the book 5 stars. The reality is that I did this for one reason but one very important reason. If you have zero AutoCAD skills then you are a newbie by definition. If you are, then you are used to using a mouse, NOT a keyboard, yet every example almost without exception either shows how to do the command/action with the keyboard first and then the mouse or simply doesn't mention how to do it with the mouse at all. This is wrong. Virtually all of the 2 step commands can be carried out by selecting the tool on the tool ribbon with a left click, selection the item(s) which are to be the subject of the action with left mouse clicks then carrying out the action or selecting it via a right mouse click without going near or looking down at the keyboard. McFarlane himself states he took over the book from a long series covering previous versions. I hope he takes my advice to make everything mouse first and then show keyboard example or miss it out where no normal modern PC user would use that method.
Apart from the mouse issue, this is a great book and I would strongly recommend it if you are a newbie and want to learn AutoCAD. The book is very competitively priced and worth every cent. I went from zero knowledge to being able to carry out extensive red line edits of others drawings in less than 3 weeks and in les than 3 months am now a power user due to the skills imparted by this book.

Customer Rating: 

I purchased this book when I upgraded from 2005LT to 2009LT. This book does not cover many of the new features of 2009. I was hoping for an in depth section on dynamic blocks and annotative dimensioning. This book barely covers those topics. It also skims over plotting and layers. I will be returning this book for one with much more depth. This book would be good for a beginner, and by beginner I mean someone who has never used any autodesk product. It is also biased to the architectural side of drafting.

Customer Rating: 

I purchased this as a required textbook for a beginning AutoCAD class (I am a first year interior design student). The instruction in the class was awful, but the book is great and I would really recommend it if you just want to teach yourself AutoCAD. I ended up drawing the house in the book piece by piece, as instructed, and then drawing what was required for my class. So I did double the work, but I ended up feeling very confident with AutoCAD - which is the point!

Customer Rating: 

Is there anything McFarland has left out about AutoCad 2009? Apparently not, at least for the newbie. As the cover prominently says, no experience needed. The book comprehensively covers what the novice might want. Explaining in detailed steps such basics as setting up a drawing, laying out walls of a building, and the use of layers. The latter is significant. For layering lets you decompose your design process into manageable parts. If you have perhaps used Adobe's Photoshop and its layering, then the idea transfers over readily.

The chapters also end in suggestions for exercises, so that you can integrate each chapter's lessons into your understanding. The exercises are not that extensive, so you may have to push yourself into devising more problems if you feel the need.

I should add that the text applies AutoCad to the designing of a building. Other important usages include designing consumer products. But the book stays on topic with architecture.

By the way, for non-US readers, the examples in the book all use imperial measurements. But you can trivially change the Autocad settings to use metric.