Open Inventor Documentation

Manuals

The Open Inventor toolkit is documented primarily in three books published by Addison-Wesley:

book covers

The most comprehensive source of information on using Open Inventor is The Inventor Mentor by Josie Wernecke (ISBN 0-201-62495-8). A summary of The Inventor Mentor, organized by John Barrus, is available.
Extending Open Inventor by adding new classes is explained in The Inventor Toolmaker, also by Josie Wernecke (ISBN 0-201-62493-1).
The Open Inventor C++ Reference Manual contains hard-copy versions of the online manual pages for all Inventor object classes (ISBN 0-201-62491-5).

These other handy documents are available:

A summary of The Inventor Mentor. Not a substitute for the real thing, but it will give you a feel for what Inventor is all about.
A PostScript version of the Open Inventor Nodes Quick Reference is available through this link if your WWW viewer can view PostScript, or is also available via anonymous ftp for easy downloading.
A PostScript version of the guide describing How to Write an Open Inventor File Translator, is available through this link or via anonymous ftp.
A PostScript version of the guide on Optimizing Open Inventor Applications, is available through this link or via anonymous ftp.

We welcome feedback and comments at webmaster@www.sgi.com.