Advance Steel help menu display defaults

[muleman1]

When we hit F1 or hover any of the ribbon commands and choose F1. Vanilla Autocad2015 help pops ups instead of AS2015 help. We have worked around it my placing a shortcut (top left of pic). Is there some where to set the default help menu so when we press F1, the appropriate help menu opens?

[virajvoditel]

Even I am facing the same problem. In fact, the shortcut you suggested opens up a "Page not found" for me. I am unable to access AS help. Any idea where I can find it online?

[muleman1]

We have experimented with three temporary fixes:

1. We assigned a shortcut to the quick access tool bar: 

2. You can access thru start menu:

3. we assigned the F3 key to bring up the menu. (google assigning Function keys)

No of these however will bring up the exact help needed for the function you are hovering over. You still have to search. Even seaching when we copy the AS command line promts (AST*), the AS help does not recongize the command????

[virajvoditel]

Thanks, at least I was able to access the Help through the start menu.

[FProcp]

I think this is a big failure in the software. Most of us are new to this software and WE NEED interactive help. This must to be fixed soon.

[muleman1]

@wtheron do you know anyone far more advanced than us to address the help menu issues in the pix of this post. We have tried repairing, re-installing and uninstalling AS with no avail....it seems as though the help menu doesnt work as desired.

[cad]

Hello,

you have to insert the command with the leading "_". Then you get the right result for the command.

Regards

Joerg 

[muleman1]

thanks @joerg.seyffert so I've been playing with me help menu and this is the work flow I've come up with....

Step 1- hover over ribbon command and press F1 for help for the particular command I am hovering over , #2 -copy AS command from vanilla AutoCAD help, #3 paste into AS help (I have to start that manually), #4 - insert underscore prefix , #5 - view non relevant topics...... most times AS Help does not even recognize the _AST* that we copy into the search ??? It does bring up relevant topics occasionally. Do you have this similiar experience ?

[cad]

I hoped, this could be a solution, but you are right. It only works in some cases.

I don't unterstand this. Autodesk must fix it. 

Generally the documentation of the program ist not good. The Starting Guide only describes the work flow, an the User guide is not better.

Regards

Joerg

[muleman1]

Thanks for the help, without the support of this forum and YouTube users, we would be totally lost. I saw on AutoDesk website another forum type page called Idea Station, but there was no listing for AS

[wtheron]

Muleman,

I am sorry I do not know the answers to the questions in this thread regarding F1 Help.

[muleman1]

@DumitruBerteanu

 have you encountered the problem described in the 1st post of this thread ?

[DumitruBerteanu]

The F1 is indeed binded to the AutoCAD help and now the Advance Steel help file.

To access the Advance Steel help file you can use the button present on the "Tools" ribbon tab, as showed below :

This calls an Advance Steel command : "_AstM4HelpCommand" which starts the apropiate help .chm file.

You can then map this command to create a new button with it on the quick access toolbar.

[muleman1]

when hovering over a given ribbon command, the option "press F1 for more help" appears. Shouldn't pressing F1 at this time, bring up the appropriate, specific help information for the given command you are hovering over ???