@Watru88
Keep in mind that for anything you can craft in the nano crafter you do not need schematics. Also the intention is that industry should not be a fully DIY solution for parts.
Let's say you experiment a lot with small core ships. A lot of what you'd use for that can be crafted in your nano pack. you could also buy an Assembly line M and the schematic for the part and then craft a stock of the needed subcomponents in inventory.. If that makes sense.
The game is young and a lot of things, like a proper functional market economy such as seen in EVE, are some time away from becoming a reality. That said, there's certainly room for making a quick buck on markets if you are observant and smart. Since the markets are still very small and young, prices can fluctuate and it's relatively easy for some to manipulate markets.
Also, while the schematic system in itself is not a bad idea at all (it is pretty much the same as the blueprint system in EVE industry), what is missing is the mechanics around it that feed it and we can only hope NQ will eventually start implementing such mechanics removing the need to have bots seed schematics.
See THIS POST for an example of how that could work. All we can do is hope NQ pays attention to posts like this and starts designing solutions for this.
Schematics were added in December with patch 0.23 and a lot of the youtube content was made in September/October when the beta was first released. For industry related content that includes schematics, you should look for things made after December 10th or that mention the patch. There were other industry changes as well that earlier videos would not have covered. More advanced items now require different tiers of industry machines. For example, refining a tier 3 ore now requires a higher level refinery.
As a new player, I think you'll enjoy the game more by avoiding the industry aspects while you learn other areas of the game. Buying the items you need will generally be much cheaper than the startup costs of setting up the industry to produce it. Start out buying what you need to build a ship/base, explore other planets, try out pvp, find a community of players to interact with, etc. Once you get an idea of what you enjoy doing, then you can focus your industry on just the items you need in bulk.
If you really want to get started with industry because it interests you, then the only way to limit the initial grind is to focus. Don't try to make everything. Find an item you think you can sell and just setup the industry for it. Then use the knowledge/profits from that setup to expand. Industry is now an expensive investment though, so you're going to have to grind for quanta.
Mining ore and selling on the market is the most straightforward way to make quanta right now. If you mine a lot, look into territory scanners. You can run them while mining and they help you find which tiles have more abundant ore. If you want to diversify the grind, there are some other ways to make money though.
One example is hauling items between markets. Buy things at a lower cost and then resell them. This is a fairly consistent way to make money, but market demand for many items is low so it will take more time than mining to grow your quanta. The benefit is you can spend that time doing other things in game while waiting for items to sell. Hauling can transition well into industry if that is your goal. For example, I found a location where I could build a shop to sell fuel and scrap. I didn't have the industry skills to make low cost fuel yet, so I initially bought the items at the market to resell at my shop. As my industry skill improves I'm making some of the items now and still buying others from players/markets.
