Brief:
When this book was discussed on The Rocketry Forum, I knew I wanted a copy. The book is written by Charles Adams and is published by Modeler's Notebook. Adams has 20 years of drawing experience and is the founder of starshipbuilder.com. Here is the summary from his web site:

"In the MODEL DESIGN & BLUEPRINTING HANDBOOK, Volume 1, see how to get project ideas out of your head and onto paper -- or into the computer! Packed with over 260 pages and more than 230 detailed illustrations, this one-of-a-kind book covers all the basics of 2D design and illustration for model-related projects from start to finish. Whether you want to draw with a pencil and paper or your handy-dandy computer, this book is the place to start."

Construction:
The book is organized into two sections and seven chapters as follows:

• Section 1 - Creating Blueprints

1. The Blue Print Process
2. Blueprinting Basics and Standard Practices
3. Laying Out Plan Views

• Section 2 - Making Construction Patterns

1. Pattern-Making Basics
2. Cross Sections
3. Developments
4. Transitions and Intersections.

There are appendices on printing, scanning, and importing/exporting files, a link to the online-only glossary (this is odd, but not that big a deal) and a short list of related books. The concepts in the book are well illustrated (which is good) and easy to follow. Key points are highlighted in wide margins, which also available for making your own notes.

The first two chapters were largely introductory and refreshed my high school drafting and real world technical drawing experience (as an EE, not as a draftsman). In many cases, the drafting standards presented are overkill for what a scale modeler will need, especially if you are going for sport- or semi-scale plans (like me). However, it never hurts to learn good techniques. The book doesn't train you to use a CAD package, but it does describe the techniques assuming you have one. If not CAD, at least a good vector drawing package like Corel.

The third chapter describes how to start creating your blueprints/plans. It basically describes how to use orthographic projections. I found had forgotten everything I had ever known about them. It also describes how to base your drawings on photos and how to deal with the perspective and photographic distortions in images. This is one of the things that drew me to the book. Unfortunately, it had no silver bullet or magic techniques. Still, this material will prove useful for me at some point.

Chapter 4 continued to instruct the reader on how to lay our drawing using examples from simple geometric shapes to a submarine model. (There is even a rocket shown.) You learn how to generate auxiliary views to find the actual dimensions of faces/sections that aren't visible. An example that I think is useful is generating the oval shape resulting from a tube that is cut at an angle.

The basic techniques shown in the first chapters are extended in the following chapters. Chapter 5 shows how to generate cross-sections; Chapter 6 shows how to visualize and draw various geometric shapes as ‘unfolded' 2-D views; and, the final chapter shows how to generate intersections of various objects. For the most part, these more advanced techniques require more thought and I didn't walk through every example in detail. The detail of the examples in these sections seems to vary from superficial to detailed. There are several things (at least) that seem to be useful for rocketry, such as generating an odd transition from, say, a square section surrounding a cluster to a single tube or the transition between multiple angled tubes.

Summary:
I found this book reasonably well written. I've seen better, but I've also seen worse. It both served as a reminder of things forgotten and a guide to techniques that I have merely muddled through in an ad-hoc manner. If you are a professional draftsperson, this volume probably won't be too exciting. However, if you want to create drawings of rockets, ala Rockets of the World, this should prove useful. I recommend you have a CAD program or at least a good vector drawing package loaded and ready to go. You will get a lot more out of the book if you work as you go. Like programming, you can't just read the book and expect to be proficient. For those who want to learn more, the author promises a Volume 2 on 3D modeling tools and a Volume 3 on CNC processes. I did note that the author seemed to evade some issues by referring to 3-D modeling (and book #2, hint, hint).

I was happy with my purchase. I found it interesting even if I only apply a small amount of the material.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5