If you have never used Inventor before, this book will get you up and running quickly. However, to get the most benefit, one will have to do all the exercises. This not only exposes you to all of the options associated with different tasks, but the exercises build on what's been done before, so a step will be repeated in shorter form in later chapters as part of a new exercise, and you develop a memory on how to do things, and do them more automatically. You can probably be building your own assemblies within a few days or less.



After a chapter on the user interface, the book goes step by step building a large fan on casters. There is a webpage on the Sybex/Wiley website with supplemental files, and you can look at the part files and avi files for the last chapter, and that will give you an idea of what you will be making. The beginning chapters have you building sheet metal parts, then later on, using part files available from the Autodesk website and from libraries, and plastic parts after that. The book ends with creating presentation files - 2D drawings, exploded views, assembly drawings, BOMs, and animations. The steps are easy to follow with explanations of options along the way. There are pictures on almost every page, and they are for the most part very clear. (The pictures are grayscale, no color plates, but you can get all the files from the Sybex/Wiley website.)



One thing I wish this book had was some indication of what number sketch you're supposed to be on. You make a lot of sketches in this book, and every new sketch is automatically numbered by Inventor, like Sketch 1, Sketch 2, etc., and if you're on the wrong sketch, you may get a "No uncconsumed sketches on the part" message, so then you have to go back and see where you missed a step about starting a new sketch.



Overall, a very clear book exposing lots of Inventor features and tools, and through the exercises, familiarity enough to make your own parts and assemblies.