Nessus is pretty straight forward to learn, and set up.
1) Run the server
2) Connect to the server
3) Select the scanning policy you want to use, or create your own.
4) Input target, and start the scan.
5) Look at the results.
There is of course, a few settings you may want to look into (just browse through them). Generally it's a quite intuitive interface and easy to learn as well, if you just try it against a local machine on your own network.
About guides or articles, try: SecurityTube, YouTube, or just google for "Nessus guide", or something similar. Your best shot at learning Nessus would probably be, to check out the tool yourself.
IF you want to write addons / plugins, I'd recommend the documentation. Enjoy!
