Teaching Newbies Inventor

[Eric Scheuing]

I know 103 had their kids to lego models last year. That might be a good thing to do.

[aksimhal]

Hi! I tried to open the FirstBase Files to teach some new kids Inventor, but I can't really figure out how to get the "modules" as the FirstBase Inventor 2008 Tutorial calls it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[sishu7]

We have mentors associated with Autodesk (so it was easier), but here is what we did:

We made a pitch to Autodesk for both more mentors and for Inventor training. We brought the robot, etc.

They let their company "professional CAD trainer" person lead a few of our design team meetings. It was a really good intro to CAD. To share the wealth, we invited a few other teams.

Not too hard, and a great intro to CAD by someone who does this for a living.

[Daniel Morse]

At RPI, I am a Teaching Assistant for Engineering Graphics and Computer Aided Design. This is an introduction to general methods in CAD for all incoming engineering students. The method we use is having weekly assignments that emphasize different techniques (sketching, constraints, extruding, revolving, sweeps, drafting, and others). For the final, we have the students put together a large and extremely complex (for their relative inexperience) part which combines all of their skills and reinforces most of the problem solving skills that are needed for CAD. This method of various parts with different emphasis works very well. Now, I teach UGS NX 5 in this particular case, but being a skilled and experienced user of Inventor, I can tell you that it should work for that as well. The only thing my class doesn't teach is assemblies, and that is something that should be easy for you to add, just make all of the training parts they build designed to be put together in an assembly, and you've got a comprehensive training program that should really teach these guys how to work the program. Also, from personal experience, I can say I taught myself how to use Inventor a number of years ago back in high school just from having parts that needed to be modeled, and sitting down and figuring it out until it worked. This requires a great deal more perseverance and motivation to work, but it is also effective. Good luck with your new members.

[Elgin Clock]

Anyone have any suggestions for a user who knows SolidWorks but wants to learn Inventor? I'm a CAD major & a Drafter in my career, so I know CAD, it would just be a matter of just learning a different (brand) software.

Any suggestions (re: books, online training) for those who have used SW first and then went to Inventor would be appreciated.

I want to be able to help my team a little more in 2008 than I did the past year from knowing the software.

It took us litteraly 1 hour to learn how to export a part in Inventor last year because the command wasn't where I thought it "should" be by using Solidworks.

When you only have a few days to crank out CAD drawings, an hour is just way too much time to spend on something that would usually take 2 minutes at the most.

[Dan Zollman]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Anyone have any suggestions for a user who knows SolidWorks but wants to learn Inventor? I'm a CAD major & a Drafter in my career, so I know CAD, it would just be a matter of just learning a different (brand) software.

Sorry for taking a while to reply. I don't have a good answer to your question. Of course you could learn the same way that everyone else does, but it would be a waste of time to go through tutorials or a book since you already know the concepts.

My one suggestion is to use Inventor Help (help menu). The help system is really extensive; it has an explanation of the concept, workflow, and options for every single tool. If you know the term for the function you're looking for, you can use the index or search to find it.

[JD Mather]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Any suggestions (re: books, online training) for those who have used SW first and then went to Inventor would be appreciated.

See these tutorials - particularly start with the MA13 and the MA105 tutorials.
http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/content..._tutorials.htm