Best Web Resources for Learining PRO-E & INVENTOR

[gagansdiscussio]

I would be greatful to any and every body who could post links to various websites which have good tutorials on PRO E and INVENTOR.

[Doug G]

I teach Inventor to my Robotics class for 2-weeks and simply use the tutorials that come with it for making parts and assemblies for the first few days. That will get most students up and running the fastest. Don't forget www.firstcadlibrary.com

Haven't used ProE, but I hear it is a bit more full featured.

[petek]

There are a bunch of good links for Inventor resources and tutorials on this CD thread

My favorite site for Inventor tutorials is Sean Dotson's excellent site

[miketwalker]

I've found no good Pro/E tutorials personally. However, the book we use in my college class, that I've also found very popular to purchase online is "Pro|ENGINEER WILDFIRE Tutorial and MultiMedia CD by Toogood/Zecher" It is a click-by-click book showing how to do things, which is nice if you are completly new to the program... but it's not a good book for just looking for a quick fix if you broke something.

If you are debating between using Pro/E or inventor... I highly suggest Inventor. I've worked with Solid Edge, Inventor, and am now working with Pro/E. Pro/E does have many nifty little features, but it is so incredibly non-user-friendly that when you make a minor mistake it can set you back an hour. It's ridiculous. With Inventor and Solid Edge you can simply go back to fix things, whereas Pro/E is very fidgity sometimes. Pro/E and Solid Edge (Solid Edge is my personal favorite 3d modelling program, very well done, and very similar to Inventor's interface but has many of the additional features Pro/E uses... but it's very user friendly unlike Pro/E) both have good support fortunately built into the program. You can simply search for support and find it in the program for most things.

If this is the first time you're messing with 3-dimensional modelling programs... go with Inventor for this year because you can pick it up 10x faster than Pro/E, and if you've ever worked with AutoCAD before you'll catch onto Inventor very quickly. Pro/E's user interface is very strange. The additional power that Pro/E could give you is not worth the hassle, at least not for FIRST. Inventor has all you'll need and then some, probably even for corporate situations. Pro/E is nice to learn if you just want to be familiar in different programs, and it does help clean up your skills with other programs for efficiency, but if you're considering learning it just for FIRST... just go with Inventor, it'll save you so much pain. Don't bother with Pro/E unless you need to.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by miketwalker

However, the book we use in my college class, that I've also found very popular to purchase online is "Pro|ENGINEER WILDFIRE Tutorial and MultiMedia CD by Toogood/Zecher" It is a click-by-click book showing how to do things, which is nice if you are completly new to the program... but it's not a good book for just looking for a quick fix if you broke something.

Roger Toogood's tutorials for Pro/E 2001 are good as well. You also might find stuff at Pro/E Central (free registration likely useful) [Edit: Pro/E central has had a bit of a renovation this week, it seems. Check into it, even if you're not working in Pro/E--they seem to have diversified.], Synthesis Engineering (tips and tricks), Olaf Corten's Pro/E Site (hundreds of links here, many are good!) and the Pro/E FAQ-O-Matic (FAQ, no specific Pro/E Student Edition reference, though).

Originally Posted by miketwalker

Pro/E does have many nifty little features, but it is so incredibly non-user-friendly that when you make a minor mistake it can set you back an hour. It's ridiculous. With Inventor and Solid Edge you can simply go back to fix things, whereas Pro/E is very fidgity sometimes.

Originally Posted by miketwalker

Pro/E's user interface is very strange.

Very, very true. Wildfire improves on this, incredibly enough, and with some practice, you'll find yourself screwing up less and less. But he's right about the fantastically steep price for not planning your model (sketches, especially). On the other hand, A Pro/E model tends to be more geometrically consistent and correct than an Inventor one--Inventor allows more assumptions in its constraints, and doesn't do a good (some would say Pro/E is infuriatingly pedantic) job of checking inter-file consistency.

Do you need Pro/E for FIRST? Maybe not. Do I like it? Yes, I do, because I've managed to use it for FIRST, for class assignments, and for other interesting projects--and perhaps most importantly (in the "grand scheme of things") at work. Let's face it: Inventor is laughed at in the serious 3D modelling community, because it's too new, and Autodesk really blew it with AutoCAD's 3D functions. It's not that it's bad, just that it's less capable, and carries an unfair amount of AutoCAD's baggage (totally undeserved, since the 3D modelling philosophies of AutoCAD and Inventor are utterly different).

I can't say for sure whether Inventor will be 10 times easier to learn than Pro/E, but I suspect it isn't that bad. Maybe 4 times easier. The trouble is, it can't do half the stuff Pro/E can. If you just want solid modelling, and have a substantially limited amount of time in which to learn it, Inventor is the way; if you have the time to mess around, and want far more advanced capabilities, or want to pursue a related career, learn Pro/E.

Also, I assume that you would be getting Student or Academic editions (those are not the same thing) of Pro/E--that negates much of the cost disadvantage (commercial versions of Pro/E are disgustingly expensive--tens of thousands of dollars, per seat!).

[Peter Matteson]

I originally learned with the Togood book as an exercise to go with the a class I took in college. The best book I have for the advanced features in PRO/E is actually the PTC course book for Fundementals of Design. However to get the book you need to take the class. I recommend the class if possible though because the surfacing, family table, and failure resolution parts of the class are good for those who just know how to do the basic modeling but aren't yet power users.

I ocasionally use the following sites for for help.

http://www.proecentral.com/
http://www.cadmin.co.uk/proehelp/

Also we have the online tutorial Cadtrain. It's really not that good though.

I think 90% of what I know in PRO/E came from learning the basics in school and then sitting in the middle of dozen power users for a few months.

[Peter Matteson]

Also, remember when talking CAD the PRO/E interface is designed by engineers for engineers. It is a solid modeling program not a drafting program. If you don't need the solid model data your wasting money on a lot of extra horsepower. Pro carries a lot more data than just geometry, won't waste space explaining what I mean here, remember that when an assembly crashes your machine.

BTW Last I checked a seat of PRO was $20,000 list price plus maintenance fees, but companies don't pay that much. We have approx 50 seats and transfer them between divisions when necessary.