Getting Autodesk Inventor to be familiar with it prior to kickoff

[ahartnet]

I'm the coach for a rookie team, 5414. I'd like to start working with inventor so I can get some familiarity with it prior to our teams rookie season (I'm a CompE with limited 3d modeling experience) so I can provide some help and guidance to the students. The school uses Inventor for their PLTW classes, so I plan on using the same software in case we have any students come through with some experience in it.

However, it looks like the 2015 virtual kit just provides us the option to download but not work in the environment yet. And following the instructions here: http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default...odesk-2015.pdf I can't even watch the videos that explain the registration and download process.

Any suggestions?

[philso]

Hey Andrew

Are you in Pearland (guessing based on your team name)?

You may want to find a Mentor who is already fluent in the use of the CAD tools, most likely from their day job. Ask your team members if any of their parents use Inventor or if they work at companies that use Inventor.

Do your team members already know how to use Inventor effectively? If not, they may want to do training after the build season. Otherwise, they will have a hard time learning how to make effective use of the CAD tools during the build season. Those team members may be better deployed into other activities.

[ahartnet]

Thanks for the response.

We will likely have a 1 or 2 students with Inventor experience from their PLTW classes. We've been having about 30+ people show up pretty regularly (with more likely to show up during the build season because band is done), and I've been trying to think about how to keep them involved with only about 4-5 mentors and knowing that most the students will need a lot of oversight this first year since none of them have been through a build season. My thought process is to take a few of the freshman and have them use this season to get some experience and see if they can end up CADing what we end up building.

All that said, I expect to not be dependent on CAD for anything this first year - we definitely do not have that experience.

EDIT: and yes, we're in Pearland. The kids really wanted to work Pear into the name someway. Other options they had come up with: Pear Force, Pear Force One, AmpPears (like Ampere).

[TikiTech]

There are great tutorials on youtube. I found a lot of VEX based ones when we were starting up on CAD.
At the moment the design doesn't matter as much as learning the interface of Inventor.

You and your students should join the academic community at Autodesk. This will allow you to download just about any of their products for educational use for free..
Gives access to forums and tutorials too.

http://www.autodesk.com/education/home

It is how our team got started.. downloading the CAD files of the earlier years Kit of Parts (Vex and FRC) and used the youtube tutorials..

Sample Vex tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-vSc79XsO8
(not associated with poster)

Follow a few, they get better.. But from a few of these you will start to understand it.

There are tons more but at the moment I cannot easily access them from school..

Good luck with it. Lots of fun!

Aloha

[FrankJ]

I downloaded inventor through the Autodesk educational site. I originally registered some years ago so I forget the exact process. My version has the educational watermark on it.

L

[TikiTech]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

I downloaded inventor through the Autodesk educational site. I originally registered some years ago so I forget the exact process. My version has the educational watermark on it.

L

I believe recently Autodesk announced that the new versions for educational use are full copies without watermarks!!

I will try to dig you up a link

Found something about it.. http://www.studica.com/blog/2013-aut...ites-announced

Also Autodesk grants their Academy Suite about once a year to robotics teams.. Last year we got the grant, 100 licenses..

Aloha!

[MrBasse]

Students.autodesk.com

Click the link for free software downloads. It no longer requires a .edu address and watermarks are gone. You get a 3 year license and will only run into trouble with downloading too many programs. I think I have at least ten different programs on my computer at home.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Andrew registering through the student site should be fine. I did it a month or two ago to get Inventor and Revit on one of our team computers to be able to easily import some files and things even though we design in Solidworks.

If you have any inventor questions let me know. I used inventor for my first 8 years in FRC.

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Andrew registering through the student site should be fine. I did it a month or two ago to get Inventor and Revit on one of our team computers to be able to easily import some files and things even though we design in Solidworks.

If you have any inventor questions let me know. I used inventor for my first 8 years in FRC.

Yep, it is for students (elementary through high school and college) and educators. If you read the fine print, a mentor is an educator.

[ahartnet]

Thanks all, I was able to create the account and download inventor pro. Now to do some tutorials....

[philso]

There are also many tutorial videos on YouTube. Search for "AutoCAd Inventor 201x" or "how to xxxx in AutoCAD Inventor 201x". I use AutoCAD Mechanical at work and search for tips from time to time.