Finding Your Way in the Inventor Interface - Autodesk Inventor 2010: No Experience Required - page 6

On the Get Started tab are the basic New, Open, and Projects tools. (We'll talk
more about Projects later in this chapter.) These tools are in the Launch panel.
The Learn about Inventor panel and User Interface Overview panel contain tuto-
rials that go into some of the concepts of the interface and provide easy access
to information about this version of Inventor and Inventor's tools in general.
For an added touch, the Involvement panel offers quick access to the Autodesk
Education Community where students and teachers can access free software and
curricula. This panel also provides an important link to the Autodesk Customer
Involvement program, where you can participate in programs and tell Autodesk
what you like about Inventor or where you would like improvements made.
Inventor has a tradition of a dynamic interface. Inventor automatically offers
different tools based on the type of fi le you're in or what you're doing in that fi le.
For example, when you create a new Part fi le, Inventor begins the new fi le in a
sketch by default; therefore, the Sketch tab is active (Figure 1.5).
FIGURE 1.5 Tabs that are automatically selected by Inventor are also highlighted.
Because Inventor is now primarily focused on these sketching tools, the
dynamically selected tab is highlighted in color; the bottoms of the tab's panels
also appear in color. If you need to use a tool on another tab, the dynamically
selected tab's highlight makes it easier to return to. To use a tab that Inventor
didn't select, you only have to click the name of the tab.
Over the course of the following chapters and exercises, you'll see that frequently,
Inventor presents the tab that you need most when you need it. You'll also notice
in Figure 1.5 that not all tools are the same size, which makes it easier to fi nd the
most commonly used tools. Some panels have a downward-pointing arrow next to
the panel name to show that you can access additional tools by clicking the arrow
and expanding the panel.