AutoCAD Help needs more help.

[Wish List System]

Summary: Help that is actually helpful

Description: I always feel dumb for trying to use Help.

You should be able to go to Help to find usefull info. Most of the time, you enter a key word and only find non-related suggestions. You can enter some commands and there wont even be a single help item...

Ask most users about AutoCAD Help and they will laugh and tell you not to bother trying it.

Autodesk needs to reevaluate its Help files.

Product & Feature: AutoCAD

Submitted: Fri, 18 Nov 2011

[pracslipkerm]

I certainly agree with you - there is really no point using the help for even basic searchs as trying to find a relevant answer is too time consuming. I find it fair eaiser and quicker to google!

[edwa8511]

Everyone in my office agrees also. It's getting worse with every release.

[cadtag]

If you look at the most recent on-line help (2015 and I think 2014 as well), those are released under a Creative Commons license that allows anyone to expand, modify, correct, update and distribute (with attribution for the original material). So it's entirely possible for any one who wishes to create new and or better help documentation using the original as the basis. (of course, that particular CC license does not allow commercial use, so that hypothetical _anyone_ can't get paid for doing the work and releasing improved help. It will take an extremely charitable person to take on that task)

[BlackBox]

Long time issue for me as well; I'm at least encouraged to see the page-specific, GUID-based URL being displayed (for copy, browser bookmark, etc.).

Cheers

[tyger_purr224843]

I had to stop using "help" when it went to the internet format because the searches were useless.
I get better answers from Google.

[BlackBox]

I had to stop using "help" when it went to the internet format because the searches were useless.
I get better answers from Google.

More often than not, I agree with you on this.

I am encouraged that in 2015, they stopped hiding the GUID-based URL, so when you _do_ find the topic you're after, you can now properly use your browser's bookmarks, copy + paste into a forum post, etc.

That said, I'm really not a fan of the additional load on network traffic due to each-and-every-single user having to consume bandwidth for Help access... It's quite ridiculous.

[Tom Beauford]

While we use Civil 3D much of our work is in Map 3D as well as vanilla AutoCAD. From help we should be able to refine search to any one of these categories. They already have help for AutoCAD and Map 3D online why not give us separate links to them in help?

[edwa8511]

If Autodesk is going to defer 'help' questions to forums, then they need to be sure that they have people monitoring the forums enough to give adequate guidance. If we are going to be left to solve our own problems, then Autodesk needs to reward those who take the time to help others in the forums.

[Wish List System]

AutoCAD Help needs more help.

Summary: Help that is actually helpful

Description: I always feel dumb for trying to use Help.

You should be able to go to Help to find usefull info. Most of the time, you enter a key word and only find non-related suggestions. You can enter some commands and there wont even be a single help item...

Ask most users about AutoCAD Help and they will laugh and tell you not to bother trying it.

Autodesk needs to reevaluate its Help files.

Product and Feature: AutoCAD - Help

Submitted By: edwa8511 on 11/18/2011