Customer Reviews

Autodesk Inventor 9: An Introduction

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

i've been using inventor since 5.3.....this is by far the best instruction book i've seen....it's great and covers every bit of everything if your trying to learn it. finally...too bad autodesk doesn't include this with the package. now i need the advanced instructions...what about it cheng ?

Yes I fully support J. Heddinger writing in his review: "...now i need the advanced instructions...what about it cheng ?". It's the same story with each release: you can get an "Ïntroduction to..." or "Basics of..."! I think lot of typical users did not need an introduction to each release, what we need, in contrary, is a good "...release xx for professionals". Deep lay the flavours...

Inventor 9 is Autodesk's challenge to more advanced modelling packages like ProE and Ideas. Cheng reveals that Inventor 9 offers many of the features seen in those more expensive alternatives. You can use this book and its CD to cheaply learn parametric modelling. This is just a fancy way of saying that you can parametrise various dimensions of parts in your object. In doing so, you can gain greater flexibility in easily varying these values, possibly to optimise the design of a composite object using those parts.

Inventor gives 4 types of parameters - model, user, linked and embedded. The book details the differences. But the gist of the text is to rise above the low level machinations. Instead, you can grasp and use parameters naturally in your design. Like relating cells in a spreadsheet. Except that unlike a spreadsheet, the inherent graphical ability here leads you to comprehend far more.

I purchased this book hoping to get two things: a refresher on the Inventor program, and a quick reference while using the software. I found that this book was decent in giving me a refresher, but it wasn't very handy as a quick reference.
Once I started using the software again, a lot of specific questions popped up. The Inventor Help is nearly useless, so I was really hoping for some clear step by step instructions. While these do exist in this book, the examples and pictures to support are not very clear.