Is 27,000 hours of Inventor experience a lot?

[albert]

I have been thinking about getting certified in Inventor and decided to do a rough calculation of how long I have been using inventor.....from version 1 in 1999 till now with IV 2014 I figure I have logged around 27,000 hours....give or take

Any old timers here been using it since version 1?....yes I consider myself an old timer in many different ways

Albert

[LT.Rusty]

Considering that the recommendation I remember - and don't ask me where I saw it - was that you should have at least 400 hours of Inventor use before taking the Certified Professional exam ... yeah, I'd say that's a lot.

27,000 hours is a little over 3 years of your life, spent doing nothing but using Inventor.

[albert]

with 33 years of design work for the same company, that three years of my life working with Inventor doesn't seem very long 

[DarrenP]

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@Anonymous wrote:

with 33 years of design work for the same company, that three years of my life working with Inventor doesn't seem very long 

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when you put it that way no it doesn't

[dragondesign]

Got shown a demp of R1 and Started using when R2 was released. Just about 13 years now

[albert]

Oh the stories we could swap!

[IS200]

I can't draw any link between how many hours one has used Inventor and actual level of experience.

What have you been doing for this many hours? Parts and Assemblies modelled hundreds of times with the same technique do not contribute to experience.

I personally have been using Inventor since R5 and have only in the last 18 months become properly proficient in Sheet Metal. I thought I knew this type of modelling quite well until I changed jobs and had to use it nearly every day.

If I look back at my modelling skills 5 years ago, and the models I created, I would never use the same techniques that I used then. Nowadays I model much smarter, using parameters effectively and often times building models top-down from skeletons made fom either sketches, surfaces or solids and subsequently create very robust easily modifiable designs.

Inventor is a large and complex piece of software and I personally think it will take most people more then 27,000 hours to fully utilize all aspects efficiently. I don't think we really ever stop learning if we properly challenge ourselves and discuss modelling techniques with other Inventor users to refine our techniques.

All said and done, I became certified at the professional level 2 years ago on Inventor 2012 and found both tests relatively easy.

The one thing I would highly suggest if you are thinking of sitting the exam is to read up on the 'what's new' of the current Inventor release as there will be quite a few questions in these areas.

[albert]

Fortunately our product is fun    

[blair]

Hey uncle Albert, long time not hearing from you. Still doing the SnowCat thing is see.

I guess it would also depend on how much of Inventor you use. It seems like once you publish a library in CC you don't publish one for at least a year and forget the exact details, or working with Surfaces. If you don't work with in on a regular basis you forget most of what you learned.

The same goes for all the modules, I don't one uses all the sections to be an expert in all areas of Inventor.

I only started Inventor with release 4 (just a newbie).

[albert]

Blair, how are you?, what are you up to?........yes I'm still catting, I
suppose it's my lot in life and it's certainly nice to have a job.I would be
lying if I said I didn't think about doing something else occasionally but
who wants a 50 year old "cat fitter" Lol



You take care!





Albert Allen

Mechanical Designer

Tucker Sno-CatR Corporation

Phone: 541-779-3731 Ext. 307

Fax: 541-779-3735

Email: albert@sno-cat.com

Description: signature art 1

[Cadmanto]

I agree with Blair.  I think it has a lot to do with how broad your use of the software is.  If you are always creating the same type of models and only use one facet of the software then the knowledge is narrow.  I have only personally been using Inventor for 21 months.  If you calculate that in hours it is about 12000 hours.  Not along time.  I still have a lot to learn about the software and haven't even begun to tap into it's full potential.

If this solved your issue please mark this posting "Accept as Solution".

Or if you like something that was said and it was helpful, Kudos are appreciated. Thanks!!!! 

     

[LT.Rusty]

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@Cadmanto wrote:

I agree with Blair.  I think it has a lot to do with how broad your use of the software is.  If you are always creating the same type of models and only use one facet of the software then the knowledge is narrow.  I have only personally been using Inventor for 21 months.  If you calculate that in hours it is about 12000 hours.  Not along time.  I still have a lot to learn about the software and haven't even begun to tap into it's full potential.

If this solved your issue please mark this posting "Accept as Solution".

Or if you like something that was said and it was helpful, Kudos are appreciated. Thanks!!!! 

     

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21 months is only 12,000 hours if you're not sleeping.  It's about 3,000 hours if you're working 8 hour days with occasional other stuff to do as well.

[gsmith9810]

Who are you calling an old timer? 🙂

Well, my involvement pre-dates the 1.0 release and although I now actually do >USE< Inventor 2013 daily I'm not certain that my 11 years w/ADSK qualifies as "time used".

I have certainly acquired practices that newer users might find odd. You get used to working with something one way and after about 27 GUI updates, sometimes you wish things that worked fine didn't get "fixed".

[Cadmanto]

You get to sleep?  Lucky dog!!!! 

If this solved your issue please mark this posting "Accept as Solution".

Or if you like something that was said and it was helpful, Kudos are appreciated. Thanks!!!! 

     

[Breeze104]

I started with a trial of version 1 and went thru to trial ver 5 before my company bought it.   Then I took about 4yrs off and did the IT gig.  When I came bak to the company I ran the CNC plasma table, work with Inventor 5 again for about 6 months then the company bought  2008....Wow what a big differance...Now I am up to 2013 and spend most days using it.  There is one thing about this program.....There is always something new to learn.  In my time over the last 8 yrs I have learn about useing FEA (self taught on everything) and iLogic... How agonizing and great at the same time...So much to learn...so little time...LOL

[blair]

Things are going well, still doing logging and commercial trailers

[cbenner]

I can estimate somewhere in the 12,000 hour range as well... but I share that time with Vault and Autocad so it's hard to do an accurate breakdown.  Add to that about 6 months at another company years ago.  During that time 90% of what I've done has involved piping and frame building... so do I count that as Inventor experience?  Neither of those are covered extensively (if at all ) in the certification tests, so I would probably fail such a test despite nearly 6 years of sitting in front of the software.