mechanical

ok, after being with this book for 5 weeks. NOW, I have to say something about this book. I am now doing my homework and I have to read this book to do it, but in those examples, I dont' see much steps, all I see are "sudden jumps". Cmon, give me a break.. show me the steps... I do not want to spend hours on finding out what the missing steps are. If you are a beginner and dont' know much about feedback, DO NOT buy this book or you will have a hard time. Also, the way this book interprets the problems is not easy to understand either.

Almost every subject worthy of a textbook already has 1-3 classic titles all new students should read and use. For feedback and control systems, there's Ogata's Modern Control Engineering - and then there are second-rate, tree-killing (where are Ents when you want 'em?), mind-numbing, hair-tearing, expletive-inducing texts like this one. And no, swearing in French while trying to work through a problem doesn't make it more enjoyable either. First, this book is poorly written - long, tiresome, dry writing that lulls you to sleep. Second, there are errors strewn throughout, which because of the lackluster writing you'll initially miss (example, page 221, Ziegler-Nichols tuning, equation 4.52 and fig. 4.13 - mistakes in parameter names can drive you nuts until you read Ogata's clear and concise version). Third, the trivial example problems are little help in solving the harder problems, causing you to rapidly awaken from your reading stupor into frustration and mild terror as you discover the aforementioned errors. At that point, drop this book, reach for Ogata and/or the Schaum's Outline, and discover that introductory controls can make sense and even be elegant. As an aside, I did well in controls with no real EE background, but that's despite this book - praise be unto Ogata. Professors, please ignore the pretty cover and skip this expensive waste of paper, and use Ogata - your students will learn more effectively and may even continue further in the subject.

The problem with this book is it has a lot of content, tries to explain just about everything there is in controls and does not care to explain out the details ... its pretty tough if are do-it-yourself kind... But many of the things in this book are not in other books (or are better explained in advanced control books). It literally took out my interst in Controls. Certainly not a book for beginners.