Could it be related to the new online Help files?
Has the Index been moved the web pages?
Is there a toggle switch for local to online Help access?
That seems to be missing as well. The menu selection goes Help, SolidWorks Help. I saw the online option in previous versions, but not in prerelease.
Its funny how "online" used to mean "on the computer". Now it means "off the computer".
The reason we used "web help" instead of "online help" is to try to avoid the confusion of the "online" term.
Thanks,
Jim
Hi Matt,
The index has always been difficult to maintain and starting with SolidWorks 2008 was not possible to fully maintain. With SolidWorks 2008, we needed to shift to a new authoring software which did not easily support the index of CHM files. Therefore, all new help topics written from SolidWorks 2008 onward did not have terms in the Index linked to them (this fact was documented in the Release Notes for those releases). You mention one of the big downsides to of an index which is that you have to know the term used in the index. Maintenance of the index is very difficult and labor intensive, doesn't account for synonyms and leads to a lot of inconsistency in terms and access to topics.
Instead of trying to continue to support an index (which will always be difficult), we decided to put our effort into implementing a much better search functionality. This new search functionality is in the web based help. This search functionality automatically makes use of synonyms, natural language adjustments (singular to plural, etc.) and also has guided navigation to let you more easily filter down to the desired result after an initial search.
The web help should be accessible with Pre-Release. Details on accessing it are in my blog post: SolidWorks Web Help
Now that we have the new search functionality, we have removed the Index in the local help files since it is no longer up to date and we didn't want users to be misled by an incomplete Index. The removal of the index is documented in the Release Notes for Pre-Release.
Thanks,
Jim
By the way, our feedback on the web help search has been very good so far. However, we do want to make sure it is working very well, so we welcome feedback on how the search is working. Specific cases where it doesn't work well would be great as there are always tweaks that can be made to continually improve the search.
The forum can be used as a place to give such feedback.
Thanks,
Jim
Your web help is virtually useless. I get a good hit about one try in three.
I realize that an index may be hard to maintain, but it is ESSENTIAL to any document (the help doc) to find items that cannot easily be searched with a one or two word search description.
PLEASE give us an index. The web search at present does not work well.
Hi Don,
Can you give me some examples of what you are searching for? The way search works is every word that is in the content is accessible through the search, so if it is in the help, it should find it. We can also maintain synonyms so even if the term is not actually in the help content and you search for it, it can be found if the term in the content is linked to the term you are searching for in the synonym table.
With an Index, it is up to the writers to put the terms in the Index, so not only do they have to do a good job with putting synonyms in the Index, but they have to put every term that is in the content that you might want to look up in the Index AND make sure it is linked to all the places in the content where it is used. As you can imagine, this is very error prone. The search engine basically automates all of that if we get the synonym list done well.
If you can give me some examples, I can investigate how this may be improved.
Thanks,
Jim
Hi Josh,
Yes, Google is in my mind the best search engine out there - their whole business is founded on it so it better be good
There are limitations to our ability to incorporate it into our web help environment and it wouldn't be able to do the guided navigation (the areas/sub-areas on the left).
However, since help.solidworks.com is a public site, you can search it using Google directly. If you go to www.google.com, then use the following format, it will search just the web help:
<search term> site:help.solidworks.com
For example:
extrude site:help.solidworks.com
Try it out. It works pretty well.
Thanks,
Jim
Google does work pretty well, but one usually has to browse thru quite a bit of stuff before you find what you're after. And that's the problem with the SW search, TMI (Too much info) that doesn't pertain to what I'm looking for. (Someone recently commented, "Google is second only to God in knowledge.")
A problem I have (and this may be somewhat unique to me) is I may or may not remember the best keyword(s) to use to get an effective search. Great if I do remember, but when I don't -- well, you know the drill.
Jim, right now I can't remember a specific instance. I just know I've felt frustrated numerous times when I've gone looking for a solution and have had difficulty. My perception, albeit possibly incorrect, is that I had much better success with the index than with the search.
Is removing the index from software Help files a coming trend? I sure hope not.
Don
I have only used the online help a very little, but I generally think that it is very good - with (many) relevant hits on what you actually want.
Though... I think you need more synonyms between "SNL" & "SolidNetwork License" & "server license" & "server licensing" etc., so that it finds all relevant entries about that when searching for one of them.
Mille
Hi Matt,
The index has always been difficult to maintain and starting with SolidWorks 2008 was not possible to fully maintain. With SolidWorks 2008, we needed to shift to a new authoring software which did not easily support the index of CHM files. Therefore, all new help topics written from SolidWorks 2008 onward did not have terms in the Index linked to them (this fact was documented in the Release Notes for those releases). You mention one of the big downsides to of an index which is that you have to know the term used in the index. Maintenance of the index is very difficult and labor intensive, doesn't account for synonyms and leads to a lot of inconsistency in terms and access to topics.
Instead of trying to continue to support an index (which will always be difficult), we decided to put our effort into implementing a much better search functionality. This new search functionality is in the web based help. This search functionality automatically makes use of synonyms, natural language adjustments (singular to plural, etc.) and also has guided navigation to let you more easily filter down to the desired result after an initial search.
The web help should be accessible with Pre-Release. Details on accessing it are in my blog post: SolidWorks Web Help
Now that we have the new search functionality, we have removed the Index in the local help files since it is no longer up to date and we didn't want users to be misled by an incomplete Index. The removal of the index is documented in the Release Notes for Pre-Release.
Thanks,
Jim