Autodesk Inventor #1: Autodesk Inventor - ideas, tricks, and help

I don’t know much about Inventor nor do I know of other woodworkers who use it so I can’t tell you if thread is going to get much action. I would like to see what you’ve drawn with it though. I’m curious to see what can be done in the way of woodworking sorts of things.

Dave

-- Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

Hi Joe, I have to agree with Dave, I dont’ know a thing about this inventor program, I’m still fighting with Sketch up but I would like to see a rendering and do a test drive to see the user interface. Would you mind posting some info on how or where we can get our hands on it?
Thanks,
Doug in AZ.

-- Failure is not an option.

It seems way beyond anything that I could use in my woodworking.
It’s built for engineering by the looks of it and group engineering at that.
Must cost a fortune to get it operational.

regretfully, I must pass on this one.

Bob

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner

It’s AutoCads competition to Solid Works. I think that as many people use it as they do Solid Works. Maybe one or two people.

Most people here tend to go for Sketchup mainly because it’s not that involved and it’s free.

-- Gary, East TX -- The longest journey begins with a single step.

Hi Joe, I use Inventor daily in my employment as a designer & would have to agree fully with the previous posts. It is an incredibly powerful design tool for 3D engineering & manufacturing, geared towards CAD/CAM in group environments. Seems like a bit much for woodworking all considered (its gotta cost a lot & it needs a heck of a computer to run it!), but if you have access to it, like I do, why not use it…
For those who do use it, Autodesk does lots with discussion boards & user groups, etc.. There’s a ton of help out there thru Autodesk website, and AUGI (Autocad User Groups)..

Thanks all for your input.

I have found one or two WW colleagues that use Inventor, so I’ll keep it up for a period of time to see if it gets any action. I will post my projects up on the site so everyone can view them.

It is a powerful tool and over kill for what we do, but I must admit that once I got the hang of it, it is easy to use and it goes along very well with the way we build, so the logic is the same. I have tried several other programs: TurboCad, Google has a program I tried, and AutoCAD. Inventor, so far, is the easiest to learn after you understand their logic, but i guess that is true for all of the other drawing programs.

I do like showing my customers a 3D picture of the finished product before I start cutting. It is better to delete a couple of pictures or drawings on the system then to make the change during building..

So Thanks again and keep the comments coming.

Regards,
Joe

-- Joe Massanova, Somerdale, NJ