How did you learn how to use Inventor?

[Greg McCoy]

Hey, I was wondering how you all learned how to use Inventor. I learned from the Project Lead the Way Introduction to Engineering classes at my school...

[Clark Gilbert]

I believe the best way to learn a CAD program is to just get it and start playing around....i normally start off with the simple stuff then i just keep working at different things until i have a lot of the stuff down...


I'm also taking the Project Lead the Way class out my school.

[Jan Olligs]

I used the brochure that came with the demo version, then I went on with the tutorials in the help function.

[Digo]

I've learned it by myself just trying each thing. It's not something you can do with 3D max, but with Inventor it seems to be enough to use most of the program. Of course I missed many things and I wish I had opportunity to learn everything about the software.

[Brendan]

I learned how to use inventor with the help another team member.

[Bob Merkel]

Well for the most part I learned it from my engineering drafting class. Except for the teacher didn't know how to use the program either. So we had to learn from the tutorials and each other. A bunch the students now know how to use it better than the teacher.

[LBK Rules]

I learned it at the camp that VCU held last summer. Unfortunately, I couldn't buy the software then, and I probably need a refresher course to jump my memory.

[sciencegeek3]

We have a professional mentor who teaches anyone on our team who wants to learn.

[Daniel Brim]

I used the tutorials in the help function. Some of them didn't work though :-(

[dez250]

Project Lead The Way, all the way baby!!!!! Its great to see the spread of PLTW through the FIRST community since it started with my teams founder, and has grown from a little community near albany new york to 40 (i think) of the 50 united states!
Check it out at www.pltw.org and reccommend it at your school!

~Mike

[team222badbrad]

I learned the main things in like a day.... I started CAD 2 the second semester of classes and um had like less than a month to complete the Inventor Competition with the help of my teacher...

This award was only done by 2 people... 1 newbie (myself) and my teacher (has not used inventor all that much but knows more than anyone else on the team)

I did the Arm and some other parts and my teacher did the drive train.

www.tahsroboticsteam.org/autodeskinventoraward.htm

[Beast314]

I was self taught, but I had used SolidWorks and standard Autodesk CAD for a few years. It was easy to figure out after self teaching the other CAD systems. After I knew how to use it I helped others on the team and my drafting class.

[jpren]

Umm let's see. We had 2 computers and 4 students. I tinkered w/ Inventor 5 last year in my free time and this year I figured out most of the features by trial & error and some advice from a college student... either way, I wished we had more computers.

Inventor isn't hard to learn, the biggie is to know the shortcuts (easy ways to do otherwise complicated tasks). For example, importing CAD files properly w/o open loops, fiddling w/ the work planes, and using iParts (BIG timesaver)

After the animation deadline, my little Inventor group finally got the necessary machines so that all 4 of us can work. I wished we full time mentors who knew Inventor or a class in school that taught the software, however, we're very proud of our submission because it was a learning process of everyone and 100% modelled by students.

You can take a look at our submission at http://www.roboraiders.com/design/ It still surprises us that most teams couldn't find our submission from our homepage even though we uploaded the bulk of the site weeks before the Inventor deadline.

Enjoy!

JP Ren
Team 75 - RoboRaiders

[Jeff Waegelin]

I knew AutoCAD before I did the litttle bit of Inventor I learned. The rest of our crew (all MUCH more involved than me) learned on their own.

[Josh Hambright]

I knew a little bit of rhino, 3dmax, viz, and autocad before the season but we had workshops for our whole technical team and some of our other teams to learn the software at the beginning of the season before kick-off. I didn't see the relavance for the electrical guy to learn it so I blew off the tutorials...so when the build season came around and i had to layout our electronics and make sure of weight and size of everything i had to learn it all as i went. Now i'm one of the head cad people on my team.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I learned Inventor by just messing around with it... a lot of it is simple , and self explanatory.

Now MAX on the other hand...:rolleyes:

[R2K2D2]

during the preseason, the college mentors taught inventor to themselves and learned along the way throughout the pre season training. then we went and set up many weeks worth of workshops in order to get all the technical HS members CAD/Inventor savvy. it really worked out well. this is one of the best organized and design friendly robots we have had and its all due to Inventor. many of the kids are extremely profficient w. Inventor now and the rest of the tech team is competant in it.

personally, i learned Inventor pretty much through our advisor project. each pre season the advisors give themselves a project to accomplish. this year it was designing a tank-tread drive train. i did most of that Inventor work and really got to know it. also, learning any CAD package well is just hours and hours in front of the computer working on it. I was one of the main CAD guys this year so that gave me a lot of practice and learning. now I am off to bigger and better CAD packages. this semester i took a computer graphics technologies class in CATIA and it was awesome.

-Raj-

[SarahB]

Originally posted by dez250
Project Lead The Way, all the way baby!!!!! Its great to see the spread of PLTW through the FIRST community since it started with my teams founder, and has grown from a little community near albany new york to 40 (i think) of the 50 united states!
Check it out at www.pltw.org and reccommend it at your school!

~Mike

Project Lead The Way is awesome… it introduced me to great programs like Inventor :). Then again, it also introduced me to evil ones like MasterCAM. :mad:

To all you PTLW people: What classes have you taken/are you taking?
I’m currently in CIM and POE, I took IED last year and can’t wait for Digital Electronics next year :D

[dez250]

i have taken cad2, cim, Digital Electronics, POE, and am taking EDD next year!

~Mike

[Hailfire]

Well, in relation to this, I've taken Mechanical Drafting 1 & 2, CAD 1 & 2, and if I get into CAD Engineering next year, I'll be learning to use inventor. I've seen people use it, but I haven't used it yet although I really want to.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally posted by Hailfire
Well, in relation to this, I've taken Mechanical Drafting 1 & 2, CAD 1 & 2, and if I get into CAD Engineering next year, I'll be learning to use inventor. I've seen people use it, but I haven't used it yet although I really want to.

You'd be amazed how much nicer Inventor is over AutoCAD. Yes, the commands do seem rather bass-ackwards after learning AutoCAD, but it's so much easier to do 3D modeling in Inventor. CAD just sortof cheats 3d. It can do it, but it's much more suited to 2D. Inventor, though, was actually designed for 3D work. Having used both, I must say I prefer Inventor. It's just nicer to work with.

[Hailfire]

Yeah, while watching someone use Inventor, I find it very similar to 3dsmax. In other words, the way everything is set up. Autocad doesn't really create really good 3d models unlike 3dsmax and Inventor. Well, I guess I'll just have to wait til next year to use it. I'm supposed to be getting a copy of it from one of my friends so maybe I can play with it to see how the program works.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Your team should have a copy. It was included in the Autodesk box, along with 3DS Max. If someone is using yours, well, I don't know what to tell you, but I'm sure you can find a way ;)

[Hailfire]

Well, you see, our previous animators kind of, you could say, took the program for themselves and kept it. They are no longer on the team but I think they gave it back, that is, a few weeks after the GLR.

[sanddrag]

I learned it from a fellow student who learned it by going through the tutorials. The incentive for me to learn it is that if I can draw our whole transmission design in Inventor I can get the money to build it.

[Elyse Holguin]

w00t! hammond just got the ok to get into Project Lead The Way!! unfortunately, it's only first hour @ purdue cal (central location for hammond students) and i will be in AP calc...because hammond has only one ap calc class for 4 high schools taught in the distance learning lab.... but it's all ok because SOMEBODY on our team *should* be in it, and thus, we'll know what's going on. :D

[Austin]

PLTW, however, i think that i have learned more just fooling around on my own than from the actual lessons in that class. Inventor is really a "learn by fooling around" type of program, unlike AutoCAD or 3DS Max.