Why bother with the CD when the book is such a pleasure to use? The BOOK rates SIX STARS. The CD rates NO STARS. Get the book for half or a third the price of the CD. Its worth it. The cd contains many raster scans of tables from the book and links to commentary that you can find elsewhere in greater detail. The links to industry arent anything special, considering you can find them many other places for free. The interface is clunky, and hard to read. Access to the data is read-only off the CD rather than allowing you to load it and access it from the hard drive. The vector CAD drawings are simplified and generic - suitable for instruction, but certainly not for real work. You wont save any time trying to use them for anything but reference, so why bother? This CD is worth 1% of its list price and should just come with the book at no cost. Dont be taken in by the hype.
The figures of this book are very useful for details in professional drawings. On the other hand, it gives simple ideas to solve common problems on construction.
