How to Use This Book

It's unrealistic to expect anyone to read a lengthy programmer's guide from start to finish. After you read a few basic chapters, you can skim others and skip around, depending on your particular needs and goals. Here are a few suggested paths for making your way through this book.

For a basic understanding of how to create nodes and connect them into scene graphs, read Chapters Overview through Shapes, Properties, and Binding. Then read chapter Applying Actions, “Applying Actions,” and chapter Handling Events and Selection, “Handling Events and Selection.”

If you are mainly interested in reading files into the Inventor database, read Chapters Overview and An Open Inventor Sampler for an overview of Inventor, and then jump to chapter Importing data, “Importing Data.”

If you are an experienced OpenGL programmer, Chapters Overview, An Open Inventor Sampler, Handling Events and Selection, and Using Open Inventor with OpenGL, “Using Inventor with OpenGL,” are important chapters to begin with. Again, for a basic understanding of building a scene graph, you also need to read Chapters Nodes and Groups through Shapes, Properties, and Binding and Chapter Applying Actions.

Draggers and Manipulators, “Draggers and Manipulators,” and Open Inventor Component Library, “Inventor Component Library,” describe the programming aspects of Inventor that have an associated user interface. The user interface for individual components is described in the on-line HELP cards provided for each class.

Once you understand the basic material presented in Chapters 1 through 5, you can skip to Engines, “Engines,” and Node Kits, “Node Kits.” Engines, like nodes, are basic building blocks in the scene graph. They allow you to animate parts of the scene graph and to incorporate additional behavior into scene graph objects. If you are creating scene graphs, node kits offer many shortcuts.