book on doing tech drawings

[Emanuel Berg]

Maybe they can be but with the exception of power tools they aren't, and certainly not if we talk university textbooks...

Made in PRC anyone :)

[Bill]

Thank you. I was thinking about that after I posted, but I didn't have "dugout" in my current vocabulary. Thank you for clarifying!

[Bill]

Of course, as you may know, university textbooks fall into a "rigged" (monopolistic) framework. I think that the Internet is countering that a bit for folks who like e-books.

[Emanuel Berg]

A pipe perhaps. That is, a cylinder with two holes, and the diameter of the holes cannot be bigger than the diameter of the cylinder...

[krw]

I don't know how it is now but at one time people were re importing textbooks because they were being sold for a fraction of what they cost here.

[krw]

What about the dynamics of building a house on top of the tree?

[ck]

Le 25/02/2021 à 17:09, Emanuel Berg a écrit :

The articles in Wikipedia: ?Technical Drawing? (english), «Dessin technique» (french), ?Technisches Zeichnen? (german), ? will give you a reliable perspective on the subject and useful references.

[Bill]

Yes, in some countries, there is little hesitation about copying software or other publications onto a CD, and selling them for $5 on the open market. One of the factors keeping expensive books relevant, is the added "online-resources" (consisting of homework problems that the student is required to do, an e-copy of the textbook, along with extra video lectures of the material). Such a "book" may run $175, and even a re-purchaser (i.e. every re-purchaser) of it will need to pay $75 or so to access the online-resources for a semester or two. In some sense, these more expensive books serve the students more effectively than the old ones. Many students are happy to just pay the $75 and forego a physical copy of the textbook. On the other hand, the cost of tuition, not so heavily subsidized by the state, as in yesteryear, makes the cost of the textbooks a relatively small expense, even if it might reach as much as $1000 some semesters.

[J. Clarke]

The "international editions" usually have different problem sets, or at least different orderings.

[Bill]

Even different editions of the same textbook tend to have their problems reordered, to give students a reason to buy the relevant edition. Based on only a few examples, I haven't noticed a difference in the content of specific versions published in some Asian countries. Now, the paper and printing quality, that is wholly different. Many of them are printed on

*very thin* paper. And the characters used on the cover reflect the country from which the reproduction has been sourced.

[krw]

I'm sure they do now but at one time they were exactly the same books. It costs money to come up with different problem sets and "the rubes will never know". In many of my classes the problem sets in the book were only for study and had nothing to do with the class. Some had different problem sets but most of the higher level courses didn't have any assigned homework.

As noted before, a new edition on some books came out yearly to defeat the used book market. Another reason was to screw with the fraternities, who had copies of previous problem sets. ... and tests. Profs had to change tests yearly. I knew some who had a four or five year cycle on tests, figuring that anyone who had taken that test had moved on.