topic Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student in Inventor Forum

Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 17:38:33 GMT

Hi,

I am new to Inventor and wondering if anyone could recommend the best books to get me going.

I'm a CNC machinist and a first year mechanical engineering student, if that helps give some background as to where I'd like to go with Inventor.

Any helpful suggestions would be much appreciated

Thanks,

Tom

kelly.young has edited your subject line for clarity: Books?

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

Thomas_Savage — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 17:40:10 GMT

Hello,

I bought this book which helped me learn Inventor.

It has anything you will need to know in it.

And will really help you progress your learning.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Autodesk-Inventor-2016-LT/dp/1119059801

Thomas.

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

CCarreiras — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 17:42:24 GMT

Hi!

Im my opinion, just do the tutorials to start. You will find a lot in the web, yourtube etc.

Go to Inventor help to learn more specific issues.

...and come to this forum to post your problems.

Also, if you hover the cursor in any inventor icon, it will appear a resumed help about the icon, for more info, press F1.

The book will give you the same info, but in papper, in my opinion is useless, unless if you preffer to consult in papper.

When you will need more specialization, maybe when you will start to work, have propper specific training, those guys knows things that don't appear in books.... the real world.

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

mflayler — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 17:44:19 GMT

Since you have a CNS background, take a look at this site...

http://academy.titansofcnc.com/

Also I would agree the Mastering book is quite good as a glossary for everything but if you want some button-ology as well, look at https://www.ascented.com/courseware-solutions/autodesk/courseware/autodesk-inventor

Whatever you do stay away from Sham Tickoo books, they are worthless.

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

kelly.young — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 18:10:48 GMT

Hello @Anonymous it is a great idea to have a hard copy for reference. The online material is excellent, but having a book that you can read on the plane, bus, light rail, or art history class will help you learn the small details that will put you a step ahead of your peers.

Calling @Curtis_W's 2010 book I read to get me going if he wants to share it here, not sure what version he's up to.

I personally would highly recommend getting the Machinery's Handbook. Been around since 1883, you'll want it. Worked at a screw machine shop for three years setting up shop drawings for Tornos, Tsugami, Decos, Citizen, Ewamatic CNC, used the book everyday.

If you can find a cheap old ANSI or ISO standard book (if you are getting into that) it would be nice to have. Your future employer "should" have an up to date set.

You can buy the newest versions to go over the latest whiz-bang techniques or save some bucks and buy an old copy to get started with and buy the new stuff once you are ready.

You can never have too many Inventor reference books on the shelf, each one will teach you something new or show how to design in a different way.

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

Curtis_W — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 19:02:39 GMT

@kelly.young wrote:

Calling @Curtis_W's 2010 book I read to get me going ... not sure what version he's up to.

Hi kelly.young,

It's interesting to think back on this, but I realize that I, like a number of people here on this forum, accumulated a HUGE amount of Inventor knowledge from a great set of tutorials that Sean Dotson penned and that he had on his website years ago.

Glad to know that the 2010 edition of the Mastering book was helpful to you, it consumed months of my evenings and weekends! That edition was a major rewrite of the original (2009) edition which was a collective effort of many people. I worked on seven yearly editions of that book: 2009 - 2015 . Paul Munford was the lead author on the 2016 edition, which was the last edition of that text that Sybex put out.

Hi @Anonymous,

Another resource that we should mention is the on demand content at the Autodesk University site:

http://au.autodesk.com/au-online/classes-on-demand/search?full-text=Inventor&productName=&video-only=on

And then another resource of course is this forum, where you can learn an enormous amount by searching and reading past discussions, and/or creating new topics and asking your own questions. Just be sure to provide lots of details, example files, and/or screen shots, and mention which version of Inventor you are using, and some one here is always willing to help.

On the subject of book vs. video, there is a great deal that can be learned from videos, and a great deal that you will likely never see covered in a video, and only covered in a text. And also there are some people that simply prefer a book, and some that simply prefer a video over a book.

Some of this is generational, with those of us that grew up carrying books to school, generally preferring to have a book. Often that means a book as well as videos. I do like video content for learning software, but somehow I feel like I need something to spill coffee on ...so I like to have a book as well.

In classes I taught in the past, I noticed that younger students at the time wanted a digital book over hard copy. And today it's more common for students to prefer not to have to deal with text in any form, and only want to learn from videos. To each their own, we just each need to find what works best for us.

Fortunately there is a lot of great content out there on the subject of Autodesk Inventor these days, but of course some is better than others.

I hope this helps and welcome to the Inventor community!
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

Mark.Lancaster — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 19:32:24 GMT

@Anonymous

I know you are kind looking for books or something to learn from but another thing to consider... Autodesk University is jammed filled with a lot of great speakers and classes for Inventor. Granted there's a cost associated to this (travel, event, accommodations) but its a great way of learning different subject matter for 3 days and mingling with other Inventor users (and discussing things).

AU 2017 is roughly a month away (and early bird reg expires this Sunday - Oct 15th) but perhaps next year it may work for you or maybe you can swing it for this year

In the end ask the questions/concerns that you have here in the forums. There's a lot great users here that will assist you in all subject matters of Inventor.

Good luck..

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 21:47:01 GMT

Hi Tom,

I recently published a compressive book of tutorials on the full set of Inventor Design Accelerators. These are a group of 26 dedicated sections that save an enormous amount during the design process. I have actually measured times of a drawing that I was able to do 20 times faster with the accelerators than I could have using the usual Inventor methods.

If you are interested in more information about the book you can reach me at 917-446-7189. I can receive calls both during business hours and beyond, so do not hesitate to call at any time.

Dave

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

roypersa2 — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 23:15:30 GMT

Hello Dave,

I think that the Design Accelerators are great tools with poor documentation. Where could I buy your Inventor, Accelerated book, since Amazon lists it as currently unavailable.

Regards,

Rogelio

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Oct 2019 13:04:55 GMT

My tip is not to learn it from a book, but from TFI's youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF7zEkelSRiHB1rOnspaBgQ/search?query=beginner

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

leowarren34 — Sun, 13 Oct 2019 20:39:30 GMT

Someone might have already said but the community can refer you to @Neil_Cross who does the wonderful TFI CAD youtube channel, so definitely check him out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF7zEkelSRiHB1rOnspaBgQ/featured

There is also the Autodesk Advocate Hub for Students which is brand new and rather good and the community is building up so you can find like minded people: https://autodeskadvocates.influitive.com

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

Neil_Cross — Sun, 13 Oct 2019 21:13:29 GMT

What's a... book? 🤣

Thanks for the shouts. If you're wanting a quick boost, my most popular video is this one:

The title is a little clicky baity as nobody is going to learn Inventor in an hour, but it takes you through basic part creation, assemblies and drawings along with a nod some advanced stuff, with files provided.

It's very very old now though and I've been meaning to shoot a new version of this for the 2020 product as the interface is all different now, and I waffled on a lot more back in those days as the channel wasn't even a channel back then, it was just a cloud storage dump for some videos!

So feel free to have a look through that, but if you can wait I'll be doing a refreshed version in the next few weeks as that one was filmed on Inventor 2016 I think.

Re: Books to help learn Autodesk Inventor, CNC Machinist Student

leowarren34 — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 07:55:03 GMT

Cheers @Neil_Cross, I'm looking forward to a 2020 version, as for books... I have no idea what you're on about...