Best intro Inventor book?

[Trying to Help]

I know lots of people in the FIRST world like to learn by plunging into something but I like directions. Could you toss out some suggestions for the best way to start at the very beginning of Inventor?

If you have a choice, I like books like the Head First series by O'Reilly and the Teach Yourself Visually series for beginners. I gave the second series to my parents and in-laws so that I could help diagnose problems over the phone. I did have to teach my Mom how to use Google, after they had had a computer for a couple years. And shortly after that, bookmarks.

Trying to Help

[spazdemon548]

Inventor has a very easy to follow tutorial which it comes with.

[Trying to Help]

Thanks! I'll have to check with the mentor who kept track of all licenses.

Trying to Help

[Tom Bishop]

I like the book Parametric Modeling with Autodesk Inventor 2010 by SDC Publications, written by Randy H. Shih at the Oregon Institute of Technology. Just got the new version but I have been using previous editions with good success in my classes.

[JD Mather]

Originally Posted by Trying to Help

I like directions. Could you toss out some suggestions for the best way to start at the very beginning of Inventor?

You might start here
http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/AU2007/...L%20Mather.pdf

I like
http://www.amazon.com/Autodesk-Inven...0858713&sr=1-1
for beginning

and
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Auto...d_bxgy_b_img_b
as a complete reference

and
http://www.amazon.com/Running-Autode...d_bxgy_b_img_c
for advanced Dynamic Simulation and FEA.

Also check out the free curriculum materials at http://engineersrule.org

[McGurky]

I second the inventor tutorials that come with the program! they are easy to use and best of all they are FREE!! They all concentrate on a specific topic, so if you want to skip a topic you can. In addition, their is no better way to learn anything than to take a class. If your school offers any Project lead the Way classes, you could take IED or intro to engineering Design, and you do a ton with inventor, and they teach you a ton of skills you need to know that some books skim over expecting that you have "prior knowledge"

Just my $0.02

-Mcgurky

[vivek16]

Molten helped me learn by sending me PMs with tasks and instructions. After he taught me the basics, I compiled all the PMs into a word document. I don't want to take any credit though, he did all the work. I'm posting here because he sent me a PM asking me to.

Anyways, the tutorial is a bit sloppy but it wasn't meant to be compiled (it got the job done for me atleast ).

thanks, Vivek

[Molten]

Originally Posted by vivek16

I don't want to take any credit though, he did all the work.

All credit is split. I would have never done it had you not shown interest. Also, Vivek organized everything into a coherent form. Made sure I clarified on poorly worded parts.(I was rather tired when I sent those PMs) I never really intended it to become a start up tutorial, but it will certainly do the job and for less then the cost of a book. Hope it helps someone.

[Trying to Help]

Thanks everyone for all the replies! I do appreciate them.

McGurky, I'm a mentor who IRL does too many things. I suspect that the high school would figure that since I already graduated, I couldn't come back. That's why I need to figure out a way to teach myself. I could take a community college class I suppose. Our cc classes are relatively expensive so I thought I'd give this a whirl.

It might take me a while, but I am going to try to learn this.

thanks again,

Trying to Help

[Trying to Help]

Another mentor has taken on the task, gotten a stack of books including the Parametric Modeling one, and is now looking for computers. I'm happy and I referred him to this thread.

Trying to Help

[Chexposito]

have students enroll in Intro to Engineering and Design (I.E.D.), if school doesn't do PLTW, have them use inventor tutorials and the autodesk.firstbase ones.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Chexposito

have students enroll in Intro to Engineering and Design (I.E.D.), if school doesn't do PLTW, have them use inventor tutorials and the autodesk.firstbase ones.

Personnally, I've found the IED lesson plan to be a bit lacking for learning Inventor. I've taken a drafting class by my IED teacher and learned so much more about Inventor. IED is a good class, but you can't really say you learn Inventor from it without doing alot of extra stuff for fun.

[rdlevy1215]

Team 1676 made an "Inventor Quick Start Guide" that a lot of teams in the NJ area found useful a year or two back. It can be found at the bottom of the following page: http://www.team1676.com/wp/?page_id=79

[Chexposito]

Originally Posted by Molten

Personnally, I've found the IED lesson plan to be a bit lacking for learning Inventor. I've taken a drafting class by my IED teacher and learned so much more about Inventor. IED is a good class, but you can't really say you learn Inventor from it without doing alot of extra stuff for fun.

I think that depends on your teacher and your willingness to learn and to go beyond. Last year, myself and a freshman ended doing a lot of CAD work off of the course. We ended up inspiring our teacher to learn an additional PLTW course to continue to fufill our needs in Inventor. The IED course is an "Introduction" course that leaves 10 points of the CAD submission out. But IED is better than nothing.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Chexposito

I think that depends on your teacher and your willingness to learn and to go beyond. Last year, myself and a freshman ended doing a lot of CAD work off of the course. We ended up inspiring our teacher to learn an additional PLTW course to continue to fufill our needs in Inventor. The IED course is an "Introduction" course that leaves 10 points of the CAD submission out. But IED is better than nothing.

I took a drafting oriented class with the same teacher. I took the same approach. The difference was the fact that IED has to cover so many things they can't focus properly on anything. Like I said though, if your doing alot of extra stuff off of the course I don't really consider it accurate to say you learned Inventor from the course. It would be more accurate to say that you were introduced to it by the course and learned it on your own. Then again, that's just semantics.