topic Re: Disable Online Help in AutoCAD 2016 in AutoCAD Forum

Disable Online Help in AutoCAD 2016

devin_m — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 04:40:42 GMT

I am deploying AutoCAD 2016 to multiple users and would like to permantly disable online help. Is this possible?

When creating the deployment package I unchecked the box to "Always use online content when available" and am installing the offline help.

However, the user can still go into Options > System and check the box to "Access online content when available." Can I prevent users from turning online help back on?

Re: Disable Online Help in AutoCAD 2016

Alfred.NESWADBA — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 08:15:24 GMT

Hi,

>> Can I prevent users from turning online help back on?

No, not without development, there is no function in AutoCAD which let's you decide which checkbox within the options dialog the user can modify and which not.

You might try to find the registry value which is responsible for that setting and make that readonly (try that before deployment, it might be possible that AutoCAD crashes or brings up error messages when this option can't write the registry value).

If you have a proxy you might define a rule that the help content site is not reachable from inside the LAN.

BUT: why blocking users from reading help? The online help contains more info's (like link to the forums as well as to the knowledge articles) and so it's worth to get access to that. I would be glad sometimes that users use the help function, I would never block that), they are doing that to do a better work for your company (by default)!

- alfred -

Re: Disable Online Help in AutoCAD 2016

devin_m — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 20:17:19 GMT

Thanks. The help browser uses AcWebBrowser.exe to browse the internet. My company considers this to be a security risk since this is an unauthorized web browser. They don't like applications using the internet in general but are very picky about web browsers and databases since they have so many potential security risks.

I agree that the online help is a good resource for our users and am recommending that they create a favorite in their web browser to the AutoCAD help page. So I don't want to block their access completely by blocking it at our proxy server (plus this wouldn't really alleviate the security risk).

Thanks for the tip about modifying the user's permissions. However, the key that controls the online help also controls other things besides the help so I'm not sure that this is a viable solution. Below is the key that I would have to modify.

HKCU\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R20.1\ACAD-F001:409\Profiles\<<profilename>>\Variables

My other option is to disable the AcWebBrowser.exe (which is probably a better solution to avoid security concerns) but I'm not sure what features use this process. I know that the Start Tab, Help Browser, and Geograpic Location use the AcWebBrowser. We already have the Start Tab turned off and are okay with not having the Help Browser (since users can access that using their web browser) or the Geographic Location feature. But I'm not sure if anything else uses the AcWebBrowser as well.

Re: Disable Online Help in AutoCAD 2016

devin_m — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 10:33:24 GMT

@Alfred.NESWADBA - Based on your suggestion on another post I'm going to look into udpating our firewall rules to block the AcWebBrowser from being able to access the internet. Thanks!

Re: Disable Online Help in AutoCAD 2016

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 00:53:13 GMT

I have found a way to stop all but two "acwebbrowser.exe" processes. see this post on how to solve the acwebrowser issue and lighten your autocad install by up to 2.5gb

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-architecture-forum/the-acwebbrowser-saga-a-solution-amp-and-lighten-acad-2017/td