[jonbanquer]

All Gibbs manuals seem to me to follow the same format. I would
describe the format as definitions and described processes first then
many, many pages later *finally* give the Gibbs user examples to work
with hands on that re-enforce the definitions and described processes.

In my opinion it would be better if a way was found to get someone
attempting to learn Gibbs involved with using a hands on approach at a
much earlier stage. This style is exactly what Jeff Hatley tries to do
in his independent tutorials for Gibbs published by Schroff. The
problem is that Jeff's Hatley's approach, which I believe is the
correct approach to learning software and retaining what you learn, is
way to simplistic and does not weave enough of the technical
description in.

By no means am I'm not suggesting that the approach I'm describing and
greatly prefer, is an easy one. I know for a fact that it's not easy
and in reviewing documentation of other CADCAM programs I would not
say their approach is any better (some are worse... much worse) then
the Gibbs style of documentation. The exception would be the approach
taken for Rhino in their Level One and Level Two Training Manuals
which I believe to be the best technical documentation that I have
seen done so far by a CADCAM company. Their approach in their Level
One and Level Two Manuals is to give short bursts of technical
description and then hands on using what has been described in that
technical description.

I'm in the process of learning Gibbs SolidSurfacer. The process of
learning Gibbs SolidSurfacer has been arduous because I'm not the
quickest learner in the world and reading one hundred pages of
technical descriptions before getting any hands on is very difficult
for me. Based on the people I have worked with for years in machine
shops I would say I'm not the only one who greatly prefers a hands on
approach to learning. In my case, in order to retain any of the 100
pages of technical description and described processes what I do is
use a text editor (UltaEdit) and type or cut and paste (because I now
have the SolidSurfacer .Pdf) what I think are the important points.
This seems to force my mind to retain more. Since this is not the
first time I have done this I understand what the process of doing
this will involve as I get better at understanding how a product like
SolidSurfacer works in the real world. That means I will rewrite and
and remove a lot of my notes as I try and refine my notes down to
something a lot more manageable and usable then what I initially
started with.

I would like to see Gibbs documentation move to the approach I
described above and that Jerry Hambly uses for Rhino. I would be more
then happy to forward the Rhino Level One and Level Two documentation
as I would be very interested to see what you think of the more hands
on approach and if you believe like I do that he has pulled off a very
difficult task. I believe Jerry Hambly leads the Rhino training
seminars and probably gets constant weekly feedback on whether his
training material is being effective. It's my guess that these Level
One and Level Two Manuals evolved out of his training seminars where
I'm sure he got constant feedback on the effectiveness of his
documentation.

Since a lot of the hard work of definitions and defining the processes
has already been done by both you and your predecessor at Gibbs I
think the task of converting to a much more hands on approach to
learning Gibbs should be much easier then starting from scratch if a
choice is made that this is the direction to embark on. I obviously
feel it is and that it's well worth the effort to move to this style
of documentation for the Gibbs Manuals.

Jon Banquer
Phoenix, Arizona