Absolute Beginner Seeking encouragement

[chrisb]

I have had the opportunity to try out Inventor at a vacant station in my brother's laboratory (since it stays open late) where they have Inventor 5 (I think it's 5.0, actually). I'm doing this to try to teach myself, using a 3rd party book and the help files - just enough so that I can determine whether or not Inventor would be practical and cost effective for my design/drafting dept where I work. Unfortunately, I do have a lot of experience with Autocad, so that means I have absolutely no skills that I can use with Inventor, it seems. The two seem about as similar as fire & water. One particular problem I'm having is using & (especially) manipulating work/sketch planes. There doesn't seem to be much help on that subject - I know you can pick a planar surface to create a work plane, and you can offset to create a new one, but getting one positioned at an obscure angle is escaping me. I know this probably sounds pretty dumb to any of you experienced users out there, but I really miss being able to simply enter coordinates and use .xy .xz filters for acurately positioning things. I realize that Inventor takes a different approach - draw it wrong first, then correct it with dimensions and constraints, but this seems more time-consuming. When trying to draw a sketch accurately, the Precise Input toolbar only seems to work a very limited portion of time, and then not nearly as well as Autocad's command line input. The simple shapes given in the tutorials seem easy enough, but the kind of casting shapes I run into at work seem fairly daunting, and would require many work planes at different angles and positions to one another. Someone please tell me this gets a whole lot quicker & easier once one knows what they're doing, because right now, I'm not finding myself wanting to recommend this program for use in my department. And tell me why sometimes I can delete something on a sketch, and other times I'm not given the Delete option on the right-click menu. I think I must have bought the wrong 3rd part book - it only tells you how to do something, but not what to do if something is not cooperating like that. Help!
-Chris

[Anonymous]

Forget about the Precise Input dialog. I don't think I have ever had a need for it in
Inventor.

Start the Plane command and hit F1. There should be some help on creating planes.

Hard to do, but you really need to try to forget all about AutoCad when using Inventor.
Once you get going with 3d though, you will wonder why you ever did anything in 2d.

--
Kent
Assistant Moderator
Autodesk Discussion Forum Moderator Program


"chrisb" wrote in message news:f16a436.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> I have had the opportunity to try out Inventor at a vacant station in my brother's
laboratory (since it stays open late) where they have Inventor 5 (I think it's 5.0,
actually). I'm doing this to try to teach myself, using a 3rd party book and the help
files - just enough so that I can determine whether or not Inventor would be practical and
cost effective for my design/drafting dept where I work.

[chrisb]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm already pretty well versed in 3d, though - AutoCad 3d solids, that is. And I sure wish Inventor had primitives. I'd much rather hit `sphere', enter a location & diameter, and be done. Rather than make an semicircle arc, close it with a line, then revolve it. I'm really going to have to do a lot of `un-learning'. You should see some of the pretty cool stuff I've been able to make with AutoCad solid modeling. It's just that it's very time consuming, and difficult to edit afterwords, which is one thing I know is a lot better in Inventor. But now I'm going from being a winner with Autocad to a whiner with Inventor! :o)

[Anonymous]

Glad to see your a winner in Acad, but we don't want no "whiner" in Inventor
:)
3D in Inventor is far easier than Acad 3D, its like comparing a mill and a
lathe to a sledge hammer and wooden chisels.

--
Laurence,

Power is nothing without Control
---


"chrisb" wrote in message
news:f16a436.1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Thanks for the encouragement. I'm already pretty well versed in 3d,
though - AutoCad 3d solids, that is. You should see some of the pretty cool
stuff I've been able to make with AutoCad solid modeling. It's just that
it's very time consuming, and difficult to edit afterwords, which is one
thing I know is a lot better in Inventor. But now I'm going from being a
winner with Autocad to a whiner with Inventor! :o)

[Anonymous]

Been there. I worked in solids with Acad
R14 for quite some time then went to Inventor R1...what a joke I
thought, I can do this a lot faster in Acad! Well I recently tried to do
something simple in Acad and thought to myself man this is sure complicated
and time consuming <g> 

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

"chrisb" <
href="mailto:cboose2389@aol.com">cboose2389@aol.com> wrote in message

href="news:f16a436.1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f16a436.1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

Thanks
for the encouragement. I'm already pretty well versed in 3d, though - AutoCad
3d solids, that is. And I sure wish Inventor had primitives. I'd much rather
hit `sphere', enter a location & diameter, and be done. Rather than make
an semicircle arc, close it with a line, then revolve it. I'm really going to
have to do a lot of `un-learning'. You should see some of the pretty cool
stuff I've been able to make with AutoCad solid modeling. It's just that it's
very time consuming, and difficult to edit afterwords, which is one thing I
know is a lot better in Inventor. But now I'm going from being a winner with
Autocad to a whiner with Inventor! :o)

[chrisb]

Aha! Exactly what I wanted to hear, Albert. Because right at this point, I KNOW I can produce solid shapes way faster with Autocad (only because I know how). But I'm also finding lofting to be way cool. And I've been surpirsed to see that, even though a solid has been produced that Autocad cannot make (I made a wierd, twisting loft shape for fun just to see what Inventor could do), nevertheless, Autocad CAN still work with it (ACISin) -including doing a nice rendering. How did you learn? Unfortunately, I don't have access to the original manual (it's at the other end of my brother's sprawling lab in a building he doesn't have access to, and doesn't know any of the workers). And the 3rd part book I have isn't much good for explaining concepts - it just marches you through some tutorials that don't address situations that come up when I try to do things on my own, like trying to delete a line on a sketch but when right clicking, not getting a Delete option in the pop-up menu (`huh? The book says `right-click and choose Delete, but when I right click, I get a different menu that doesn't contain a delete command'). Well, never mind, I'll just keep putzing with it and I'll figure it out. That's how I taught myself Autocad, anyway. Thanks for the support. 🙂
-Chris

[Anonymous]

chrisb wrote:
> How did you learn?
> Unfortunately, I don't have access to the original manual (it's at the
> other end of my brother's sprawling lab in a building he doesn't have
> access to, and doesn't know any of the workers). And the 3rd part book I
> have isn't much good for explaining concepts - it just marches you
> through some tutorials that don't address situations that come up when I
> try to do things on my own, like trying to delete a line on a sketch but
> when right clicking, not getting a Delete option in the pop-up menu
> (`huh? The book says `right-click and choose Delete, but when I right
> click, I get a different menu that doesn't contain a delete command').
> Well, never mind, I'll just keep putzing with it and I'll figure it out.
> That's how I taught myself Autocad, anyway. Thanks for the support. 🙂
> -Chris

Check out crware.com for a good instruction (tutorial) manual. As far
as the type of books (User Manuals) you are accustomed to seeing for
AutoCAD, the only one I know of is Autodesk Inventor 6: Essentials by
Branach, Jones & Kalameja.

--
Hal Gwin
Mechanical Designer
Xenogen

Dell Precision 650
Dual 2.66 GHz Xeon
1.5 GB DDR
Quadro4 900 XGL
nVidia 6.14.10.4201 drivers
Dell UltraSharp 19" LCD

[chrisb]

The manual I'm using is Autodesk Inventor From the Top (also by Banach & Jones). I'm at the lab now, and still haven't figured out why I can't delete lines on this sketch, while on others, I can. Oh, wait a minute - I think I just solved that one. You have to click `edit sketch' 1st. I'd just assumed that if it was clicked & highlighted, it could be edited. So much for MY intuitions! It's massive UNlearn time for me! 😮

[Anonymous]

chrisb wrote:
> The manual I'm using is Autodesk Inventor From the Top (also by Banach &
> Jones). I'm at the lab now, and still haven't figured out why I can't
> delete lines on this sketch, while on others, I can. Oh, wait a minute -
> I think I just solved that one. You have to click `edit sketch' 1st. I'd
> just assumed that if it was clicked & highlighted, it could be edited.
> So much for MY intuitions! It's massive UNlearn time for me! 😮

That's very good. You recognize you must unlearn and then relearn. That
is typically one of the larger stumbling blocks for CAD users.

--
Hal Gwin
Mechanical Designer
Xenogen

Dell Precision 650
Dual 2.66 GHz Xeon
1.5 GB DDR
Quadro4 900 XGL
nVidia 6.14.10.4201 drivers
Dell UltraSharp 19" LCD

[Anonymous]

From the Top I found is a good reference book but
not for tutorials. You will need to get a better book for tuturials. 
I found that amazon has a good selection of books too.  The Elsie Moss
books are good for tutorials but more intermidiate.  Check out some of the
other books. 

Kathy Johnson

[Anonymous]

On Wed, 4 Jun 2003 07:27:35 -0700, chrisb wrote:

I'm in the same boat as you, but with Inventor 5.3

However, after working on my own with it for a few months, then
taking a course, working on and off with it for about a year, I had to
mostly abandon it.

There are a lot of little got-ya's, like if you project a line to
your current sketch to use as a construction, then actually change the
linetype to construction, the connection to the original line is
severed. The part will no longer adapt.

Things like this are not in the manual. You must discover them by a
long effort of trial and error or be told them by someone else. I
initally blamed myself for many of the errors, thinking that I was
doing something wrong. But eventually I began to realize it was just
the program. You might apply a valid constraint one way, and it later
fails... the general solution is to just try again by choosing the
objects in a different order and hope it succeeds. There is no logic
to this failure... you just have to expect a lot of random behavior.

While I know there are companies that can successfully make Inventor
be productive for them, I can't. Since we don't truely need
parametric designs, there is less modivation to put up with the
constant problems. Every project I undertook with Inventor turned out
to be a constant flow of frustration.

I guess what I am saying is that you should not blame yourself for
all the problems.

Joe

[chrisb]

Thanks for that "Heads-Up", Joe. It's a little discouraging, but, being an old pro at AutoCAD, I'm sort of expecting occasional weird, program-caused behavior (i.e. AutoCAD: take forever trying to get the program to hatch a closed boundary that AutoCAD refuses to admit is really closed; join plines that actually do have coincident endpoints but stupidly won't join anyway...the list goes on). I guess when you consider the kind of geometric number crunching these programs have to do, it could be a bit unrealistic to expect perfection. Still, a company has to approach this all from a bottom line point of view. I'd be really interested to know what types of businesses are finding Inventor to be practical. Anybody out there care to brag? I'm all ears (well, eyes, actually). :o)
-Chris

[Anonymous]

I seriously suggest a training course... the 5 day style offered by Autodesk
resellers. 5 days won't make you a pro, but it will introduce you to the
basics, and hopefully the instructor will do his/her best to break your
AutoCAD approach to Inventor. However, if you do "drop" Inventor for a
while after training, realize you'll have just wasted that week of training.
The point is - don't stop using it.

I still use AutoCAD (20%) and Inventor (80%) due to our suppliers reliance
on AutoCAD dwg's... and the fact that AutoCAD really is a good program for
2D documents with so many layer controls available. So, there's no need to
"forget" your AutoCAD skills. Just realize they are two different
programs - like Word and Excel - you don't do things the same way in Word as
you would Excel. I've been on AutoCAD since R10, and started Inventor w/
R4 - but really didn't catch on until R5 when I took some training.

Another recommendation I have is to download the Inventor World Cup models
and move the "End of Part" marker up and down... A great way to study how
the fastest modelers use Inventor. This may not apply to you now, because
most files will be in R6 or R7 format, but when you do decide to get
Inventor this will help you. Heck, download them now, put them on a CD and
open them up when you get to the training class and study them during break.
Look at where people put sketches; look at how people re-use sketches; look
at how people constraint sketch entities - you'll learn tons of information
that way.

Happy inventing, Tim W.

[Anonymous]

Chris, I teach Autocad 2D and 3D, MDT, Inventor, and that other solidworking software. I just finished an MCAD survey course with Professors who teach one or more of the above. None of them want to go back to Autocad. The Inventor way takes some getting used to, but follow this forum (I learn something almost every day) and ask questions and it will suddenly all make sense.

[chrisb]

Thanks, Tim. That was a very useful tip about moving the End of Pert marker (which I didn't even know could be moved). This reminds me of the tactic I took while teaching myself AutoLisp. You could call it the Sleuth Approach. I could only get so far by reading the manuals - when I really started to write my own routines, I would search through other's code to see how they did something I was trying to do - that's the way I learned the most, by far. The thing about a course is, I'm trying to find out as much as I can about Inventor without spending anymore money than a 3rd party book or two. This is basically research I've taken on myself on behalf of the company that I work for. I am willing to sacrifice a little of my own money and (it's starting to take) a lot of my time in the name of my own personal edification /enrichment besides. Ultimately, I want to be able to draw my own conclusion as to whether Inventor (or perhaps some other 3d package) is practical for my company.
-Chris

[chrisb]

JD: Thanks for the input. Inventor is going to take some time before I even like it, let alone get used to it. It's useful to know that those who teach it like it better than AutoCAD, but I still wonder about it's practical use "in the field". It's one thing when you have lessons in which you have predetermined dimensions and situations handed to you. AutoCAD’s incredible flexibility is what may be the reason that it is shipped with Inventor 7 (or so I've heard - I'm going to check that out to see if that's really true). If Inventor is the be all & end all that causes users to never again want to use AutoCAD - why would they package it that way (unless to hasten its demise?). 2d drawing still is faster (for obvious reasons) than 3d modeling, and sometimes all you need is 2d to try and work out some plane geometry for a design. And at this point, it looks to me like AutoCAD leaves Inventor way back in the dust if you try to compare sketching with AutoCAD’s 2d tools. But I will not jump to any conclusions, yet (although at this point, that `jump' would seem more like a skydive -although one with a static line, still).