In this edition, we rely more on video introductions for each chapter to demonstrate some of the basic concepts. You can find those video introductions on this book’s website at www.wiley.com/go/solidworks2013.
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 I have seen people use it for that as well.
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 in places unavoidable.
Although 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.
The overall goal of this book is not to fill your head with facts, but to help you think like the software, so you can use the tool as an intuitive extension of your own process. As your modeling projects get more complex, you’ll need to have more troubleshooting and workaround skills available to