In app help is empty

[eSonOfAnder]

Made a quick video showing the issue, but when hovering over a tool, it gives a hotkey combination of Ctrl+/ for "More Help" which opens a sidebar window, but that window is empty, no matter which tool you're hovering over when you hit the key combo. Not sure what I'm missing, but seems like there should be something there, not just an empty window.

[Phil.E]

Hi,

Thanks for reporting. This might be related to the Fusion preferences for in-app data collection.

This forum post is marked with a solution, and sounds like what you might be facing.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-support/learning-panel-blank/td-p/9770910#M142519

Please let me know if that helps.

Thanks,

[eSonOfAnder · Accepted solution]

Thank you, what you provided was partially correct, but pointed me in the right direction and thankfully Autodesk has updated it from what was previously an extremely problematic item to a minorly problematic one. (There should absolutely not be any link between enabling all telemetry and basic in-app help.) I'm attaching an updated version of what that screen looks like in Autodesk Fusion as of 28-Feb 2024, with version 2.0.18460.

There is now a separate item specifically for the Learning Panel. This is still questionable, as there should be offline help information provided within the app that will populate that panel when using the help shortcut, but that is a sideways related topic. There should also be some indication in the help panel to point the user toward that setting if it is needed in order for anything to be shown there. As is, the only option is to either contact Autodesk directly or reach out via a forum to other users like this one. From an end user's perspective it looks broken.

[Phil.E]

Thanks.

In order for Fusion to provide in-application help it needs to measure your usage, which is what the Learning Panel data setting is intended to do.

After restoring defaults, I can see that the learning panel is enabled by default. New users should be seeing the Learning Panel as you expect, with information, unless they turn this off.

Thanks for reporting this.

[eSonOfAnder]

No worries, but just a brief follow up. I suspect the initial settings in that panel are related to the choices made during initial product install, whether the user has opted in to full telemetry access or not. I did not even know where to find that panel, so can guarantee I had not made any manual changes to the settings there, but it is highly possible that I had declined the additional telemetry checks during install.

As far as "needing to measure your usage" - that's some shaky reasoning there at best, and leaves a much more open door than should actually exist. If the only in-app help that exists is based on contextual awareness of the user's current action and context (mouse cursor position, context menus opened, etc.), then yes, the app would need access to that contextual data, but the verbiage there opens the door for historic and trend data which is not needed for this purpose. Additionally, if that is the only in-app help that exists, that in and of itself is something that should be addressed, as there should be a more static option that has the minimum help pages outlined in a standard hierarchical arrangement addressing the tools and available options within the app.

Not trying to be a pain, but those are legitimate security and accessibility concerns. As they are only tangentially related to this topic, I am happy to send in some product feedback on those, since that's not really something broken so much as not thoroughly thought through in the current iteration of the product. I appreciate the help here in getting me to a working spot.

[lance.carocci]

Our use of "Help" here is probably confusing - perhaps "for more learning content" is more accurate.

The goal of the Learning Panel has always been to guide the user through their current command/workspace step-by-step (this is where the data collection comes into play), but it's not "in-app help" in a documentation/troubleshooting sense. Instead, our commands link to their respective https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/ page for that information.

As far as the Learning Panel requiring that checkbox to show anything, this was done for legal compliance. I imagine that line of text or access to the Learning Panel are supposed to be disabled entirely when that checkbox is cleared.

[lance.carocci]

Actually, I misspoke some - the My Learning tab of the Learning Panel does indeed continue to work, it's the Guidance tab that requires consent. I will see if we can improve this experience to be less confusing.

[eSonOfAnder]

You made an interesting comment here that I'm not following:

"Instead, our commands link to their respective https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/ page for that information."

What do you mean by this? I do not see anything other than the Ctrl + / hotkey shown on my screen for command help. I've attached an example screenshot of what I see. There are no links to anything. I had to manually go out and find the support website to locate information about any of the commands in the app.

[lance.carocci]

I totally understand your confusion - this is some great feedback to take to our Help team.

To learn more about a command, you'll want to click the little informational i in the lower corner of most command dialogs. Clicking this expands a detailed description with a More Info link. That link takes you to the aforementioned URL.

Beyond this, there is no locally-hosted help, as the application was not initially designed for extended offline use to justify such a case.

[eSonOfAnder]

Thank you for the clarification! I can certainly see where some of the difficulty is here, and that is related to the sizing of the UI elements. There does not appear to be any way of manipulating the UI sizing from within Fusion; it relies on the Windows scaling for apps which is not really sufficient. By default a lot of the elements are extremely tiny, even on a 32" 1440p monitor. Things like the info button at the bottom of the command window, for example, are literally smaller than the mouse cursor. Currently the only way of increasing that is to universally increase the scaling for all apps, which would then make other apps, and even the Windows desktop, be absurdly large.

Again, this is getting a bit away from the original issue of finding and accessing help for the in-app commands, but it is closely tied. Frankly, without looking very closely it is extremely difficult to see that the lower icon is an 'i' at all due to how small it is (and potentially it is also a very low resolution asset; that I cannot say for certain). Thank you for the additional clarification and assistance in finding things.

[lance.carocci]

I hear you. There are a few settings within Fusion (scale, canvas tracking speed) that currently rely on OS-level settings, that might be better-suited for in-app overrides. I hope we can deliver some improvements on this front, but no specific timelines to share at this moment.

[Brano64]

I've found a temporary solution - create an environment variable called QT_SCALE_FACTOR (on Windows type "Environment" in the Start menu search and click "Edit environment variables...") and set it to a value according to your preference (I happen to have 32" 1440p monitor, too, so 1.25 or 1.5 works for me)