Getting help Find the location of a tool or menu item in the interface > What if...?

Getting help

Use the items in the Help menu to open the online help system, or get help on a particular tool or menu item.

Show the online help

Use Help > Contents to open the online help for AliasStudio.

Open the online help

Choose Help > AliasStudio Help .

A browser window opens with a table of contents on the left.



Click on an item in the contents frame to open the document into the right frame. A series of icons in the right frame can be used to perform different functions on the document.

Icon	Click icon to...
	Open the navigation panel. This icon only appears if you are using context-sensitive help, by choosing Help > What's This? ? and choosing a tool or menu item, or by using the right mouse button in an option window to open Help.
	Show where this page is in the table of contents.
	Go to the previous page in the documentation. If you want to go to the last page you had showing, use your browser's Back button.
	Go to the next page in the documentation. If you want to go to forward to a page you had showing (before using your browser's Back button), use your browser's Forward button.
	Show related topics. Click to open a small window that shows other topics associated with the topic you have displayed.
	Send e-mail to the AliasStudio documentation group. Please note that this is not the e-mail address for customer support. To contact customer support, choose Help > Support Center .
	Print this page.
	Bookmark this page.

Use the Contents tab in online help

To use the Contents tab to access information, you need to know what type of information you're looking for, and in what area of the product you can expect to find it.

Each of the books in the online documentation has a letter icon associated with it. These letters refer to the type of information, and if there is a small plus beside the letter, clicking on it opens a book:

Letter icon	... represents this type of information:
	"About" information: background or philosophical material that helps you understand some of the principles at work.
	"Learning" materials: tutorials, introductory overviews. AliasStudio provides two sets of tutorials: Learning AliasStudio, and Learning Technical Surfacing.
	"How to" information that walks you through steps to accomplish a task. Information is grouped into major areas such as general tools and interface, modeling, sketching, rendering and animation.
	"Reference" information: tool and option window descriptions, and release notes. If you use context-sensitive help (by choosing Help > What's This? and clicking on a menu item or tool, or by using the to open Help from inside an option box), these are the pages you are taken to.
	Technical information: Environment variables, command line utilities, and programming manuals, for example.

Use the Index tab in online help

To browse the index for an entry, click on the word Index at the top of the window. This opens up the index for the AliasStudio documentation.



Click on a letter at the top of the window; a scroll bar will appear on the right side if there are many entries under that letter.
Scroll to the entry you want, then click on it. The document will open in the right frame, and leave the index up in the left frame.

Use the Search tab in online help

To search for a word or several words, click on the word Search at the top of the window. This opens up the search window for the AliasStudio documentation.



Click in the search box, and type the word or words. Quote marks are not required.
Click Go! or press to perform the search.

Your search results are ranked in importance, based on whether the word or term was found in a heading or within a paragraph of text.

The online help search only shows topics that contain ALL of the words you type.

Click the title beside a ranking to open that page in the right frame. The search results will continue to show in the left frame.

Recognize special icons in the online help

The following icons are used to draw your attention to specific types of information:

Icon	Meaning
	This is a note. It provides additional information on a tool or workflow.
	This is a technical note. It provides information of a more technical nature and is intended for the curious or technically-minded user. It is not essential to the understanding of the text.
	This is a tip. It shows you how to do something faster or more easily.

The Interface and General Tasks, Modeling, Sketching, and Data Transfer sections each contains a page of Tips and Tricks that summarizes the tips found throughout that section, plus additional ones, in one convenient location.

Get Help on a particular tool or menu item

Choose Help > What's This?
Click on the tool or menu item you want help with. A browser window will open to that reference page in the documentation.

or

In an open option box or control window, click the over an empty space.



Move the cursor over the Help button that appears, and release the mouse button. Documentation for that option box or control window will open in a browser window.

Use breadcrumbs to navigate the Help system

A line of blue text appears near the top of a Help window. This line is called a Breadcrumb. It's a navigational aid that helps to show you where you are in the documentation.

You can use the breadcrumb to pop up a level or more in the documentation. It's actually a series of hypertext links. In this example, Tubular offset is the lowest link. If you clicked on the link above it, Rolled Edge, you'd go to the start of the reference documentation for the Rolled Edge tools in the Surfaces menu. Clicking on Surfaces will take you to the start of the Surfaces menu; clicking on Tools will take you to the top of all the Tool palette descriptions, and so on, until you are at the book level (in this case, Reference).

Display modifier key and mouse button functions

Choose Help > Modifier keys, marking menu keys, and hotkeys .

What if...?

] I get an error message that my online docs are not installed?

Ensure that your documentation is installed from the Documentation CD that came with your product.
If Help still doesn't launch, open Preferences > General Preferences , click on System and in the Help location box, type the path of the html folder. This must be typed either as a URL string, or as a file path, as shown in the following examples:

http://www.autodesk.com/techpubs/aliasstudio/2008 or

file:///C:/Program Files/Autodesk/AliasStudio 2008/Help 

Show help on a tool or menu item

Use Help > What's This? to show the specific help for a tool or menu item you click.

Display information about a specific function

Click Help > What's This? .
Click a function in the menu or tool palette.

To get help in an option box, click with the anywhere in the option box but the menu bar. This opens a submenu that contains the word Help, and possibly other items. Scroll to Help and release the right mouse button.

Find the location of a tool or menu item in the interface

Use Help > Tool locator to find out what menu, palette, sub-menu or sub-palette a tool or menu item is in.

Find a function

Choose Help > Tool locator .
Type part of the tool or menu item name and press .

What if...?

] I get an error message that my online docs are not installed?

Copy the Help directory from the AliasStudio Documentation CD1.
In Preferences > General Preferences , click on System and in the Help location box, type the path of the html folder.

] What if I can't find the tool listed in the Find Function window?

-click the palette's tab and look for the tool in the sub-menus.