AutoCAD For Dummies, 18th Edition

About the Author

Bill Fane is a recovering doorknob designer. He was a product engineer and then product engineering manager for Weiser Lock in Vancouver, Canada, for 27 years and holds 12 U.S. patents. He has been using AutoCAD for design work since Version 2.17g (1986) and Inventor since version 1.0 beta (1996). He is a retired professional engineer and an Autodesk Authorized Training Center (ATC) certified instructor.

He began teaching mechanical design in 1996 at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in Vancouver, including such courses as AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop, Inventor, SolidWorks, machine design, term projects, manufacturing processes, and design procedures. His son Trevor was one of his students. Bill retired from this position in 2008.

He lectured on a wide range of AutoCAD and Inventor subjects at Autodesk University from 1995 to 2012, and at Destination Desktop from 2003 to 2009. He was the AUGI CAD Camp National Team instructor for the manufacturing track between 2008 and 2011. He has written over 220 “The Learning Curve” columns for CADalyst magazine since 1986 and claims to be a close personal friend of Captain LearnCurve. He has also written engineering software product reviews for CADalyst, Design Product News, and Machine Design.

In his spare time he skis, water-skis, scuba dives, sails a Hobie Cat, drives his ’37 Rolls-Royce limousine or his wife’s ’89 Bentley Turbo R, travels extensively with his wife, and plays with his grandchildren.