Microstation for Auto CAD Users [Paperback]

Secondly, Frank Conforti who writes the Microstation portions of the book, frequently says, "this is easy in Microstation." I get tired of not only the bias but also the oversimplification of the operations.

Thirdly, a great deal of the book covers the company histories of Autodesk and Bentley. The writers expressed the value of this to help understand the different philosophies behind the two packages. While I found it interesting, it didn't help me one whit to make me a better user of either program.

Fourth, the book deals primarily with the similarities of the two programs. While this is good for a beginner, it leaves unexplained the true power of each system because most tasks can be accomplished in several different ways. The book usually explains the way that is most similar in each program rather than the most efficient way to get something done in each program. The book doesn't cover the tremendous rendering capabilities of Microstation at all, since this is not something that AutoCAD does.

Since I think this is a book that would be most helpful to people who are just making the switch (not me who switched four months ago, 90% of what I would consider useful information I've learned on my own or from my fellow workers), it ought to have a chapter about first timers pitfalls.

One specific first-timer pitfall is the behaviour of the right mouse button. In AutoCAD the right mouse button is equivalent to hitting enter. It completes every command and restarts the command. In Microstation it is completely opposite; it behaves like AutoCAD's esc key. So the experienced AutoCAD user practically without thinking hits the right mouse button to complete a command, but he will discover to his dismay that nothing happens because he just cancelled the command. This just takes some getting used to.

Another thing that everyone tells the new user is there are keyin commands like AutoCAD's command line. Well, hardly. With AutoCAD to create a line all one had to do was type "l" and hit enter. To get microstation to do the same command from its key-in window, first you have to click with the mouse in the key-in window they type "place line" which can be abbreviated to "pl l". This is much more work than simply clicking the line tool from the toolbar.

It has two particularly useful chapters that each take a fairly simple project and go step-by-step through the process of creating the project using each CAD package.

It also has an excellent chapter on translating from one to the other. It points out the pitfalls and incompatibilities as well as explaining when you should and shouldn't translate.

If I've sounded critical its because I was really wanting a book that teaches more advanced features of Microstation. This isn't it.

If you want a nice history of computer aided design, this is a good book. Or if it is your first time using Mircostation this would be pretty handy (though it needs the chapter I described above)

I was hoping for a book that shows how to do each Autocad command in Microstation. This book does not do this very completely. The index of the book does not list all of the command sets of either program, so you are not getting a lot of coverage on most topics. Trying to find answers to everyday problems is not possible for the most part with this book.

My suggestion to anyone who truly wants to learn the other program whether it be Microstation or AutoCad is get a good book on either subject. The most accomplished Microstation user I know swears by Frank Conforti's books on Microstation.