2011 help - really?

[revituser195]

Am I missig smething in Revit 2011 when trying to use help? When clicking the help icon or pressing F1, I get a nearly useless online site that usually returns nothing when searching, not to mention it being painfully slow.

Where is the standard help? Gimmie a good ol' chm file please.

Thanks,
Rob

[samov]

Noticed that too... Somehow the search "feature" became useless.. i mostly find myself googling the anwear.

[truevis]

Search doesn't work in Chrome, it should in IE. Perhaps other browsers, or those with funny settings won't work, either.

Even when the Help works, it needs improvement.

[jsnyder.68308]

I use the 2010 documentation/PDFs. The 2011 "help file" is frustrating and worthless. The videos are a hopeless alternative. No families guide. IMO, the help sytem offered for RAC2011 was more than just a step backward, it was a blind jump into a hole of unknown depth. Outsource this. Sorry for the rant.

[twaldock]

I am really surprised that this has not caused more of a furore on the forums. Surely I too am missing something?

Reasons why I find the v2011 Help (?) to be not as useful as v2010:

You have to be connected to the internet. The only time I actually have for reading the help files is when I'm not in the office - like on the train.
The help files on the web are significantly slower to access (depends on connection of course, but never as quick as a network or C drive).
Search doesn't find anything, and I'm using a standard install of internet explorer 8. If I have to get the IT guys to check this out, i won't bother.
The whole format has changed dramatically from v2010 chm. Maybe it will prove to be better, but first reaction is not encouraging. I love most of the other changes in v2011 - new ribbon took 5 mins to adapt to, so I'm not anti change.
What's New in v2011 is just a list of items - no active links into help; no real descriptions.
And, when you click on help in Revit, it hijacks whatever you have open in your browser. Doesn't open a new window or tab - thought I'd lost this post. How rude is that?

I've created a shortcut on my desktop to the v2010 chm file, but that is going to be out of date over time. Any other good suggestions to get around these problems?
Help

[tropitech]

Noticed that too... Somehow the search "feature" became useless.. i mostly find myself googling the anwear.

agreed, google has been my guiding light since i started using revit, even if just for leads to info. there are many, many, many blogs out there, youtube has hundreds of revit videos, and of course AUGI is invaluable :)

[DaveP]

Check out this thread for more of same:
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=119405
(One of the threads has a link to the PDF version of 2011 help)

[patricks]

heh thread title made me think of the SNL Weekend Update skits with Amy Pohler and Seth Meyers when they did their "Really???" segment :p

[Teresa.Martin]

Search doesn't work in Chrome, it should in IE. Perhaps other browsers, or those with funny settings won't work, either.

Even when the Help works, it needs improvement.

Try this. Launch the help and it will take you to the following screen:


Hit the Index button on the top. Then type in your keyword in the index search.
Best regards,

[twaldock]

The downloadable PDF file is a static document with no hyperlinks - searching it isn't easy.
The index search in the online version only gives the same result as the PDF index - its better than nothing, but not much. Just as an example, try looking for how to modify the new elevation tags - how to change text size or location on the tags - I couldn't find anything at all.

I still have not suceeded in getting the proper search to work with IE8 or Firefox - what is the issue?