I like your writing style and the fact you include multiple illustrated examples. Other applications have poor documentation because they only tell you what a function does. Your documentation shows what a function does.

Now I just need to start practicing.

Ed

Hi SURFiNG,

> Awesome, can i translate in Italian language?

That would be great, but it isn't quite finished yet! There may be some changes before it is finalized.

- Michael

Hi Lish, thanks for the feedback!

> In my opinion, the explanation of every feature is very clear.

Great! This is pretty much my main focus area.


> But it`s not easy to navigate. To go to a specific feature, we must
> go to the top of document, then select the link.
> I like the link is on the left like solidworks help topics. If I not wrong, the format is *.chm

One quick tip - after you have jumped to one topic, you can use your browser's Back button to jump back to the top index area.

A .chm is definitely better in some ways, but unfortunately .chm also has other problems - it is harder to print and to browse a .chm on a web page. But the biggest problem is that .chm is more difficult for me to create - you have to use special tools to construct it, and after looking at several tools I found that it would take me quite a lot of additional work to create a .chm.

So I decided to do a more simple HTML structure instead so I would have more time for filling in details on commands.

After the HTML is finished I will also create a PDF version from it which will be available to be used for printing.


> Another think is I hope you will provide a sample video for every feature.

This is another one that just takes too much time for me to put on every feature right now.

But I will be doing a tutorial section as videos, which will include the operation of several different commands through the length of the tutorial.

Thanks!

- Michael

Hi Ed,

> I like your writing style and the fact you include multiple
> illustrated examples. Other applications have poor documentation
> because they only tell you what a function does. Your documentation
> shows what a function does.

Thanks Ed, I'm glad this is working for you.

I kind of tried to strike a balance - I decided that operations that are really pretty simple like drawing a circle didn't really need an image and just a short text description does ok there.

But I wanted to provide a lot of illustrated examples for operations that are much more complex like basically all the Construct ones such as booleans, fillets, .... - especially for stuff that can be used in different ways to get different effects.

One problem that I've seen with a lot of documentation is that it can stick sort of too rigidly to one single template. Like just have one image for every topic, regardless of the complexity of the topic.

One thing that works really well is doing the documentation at the end after a long beta period. That way I've been able to see what things people ask questions about the most and focus the documentation on providing more information in these particular areas.

- Michael

I feel a real plus for this type of documentation is a section that ties it all together. A tutorial at the end, such as the recent water bottle example, would be excellent.

Also, I would recommend a troubleshooting section containing things to look for when you don't get the expected results. This would save time scanning the forum for answers.

Ed

Thanks.
What you have so far is a tremendous help to me. I didn't realize so much could be done with just a few clicks.

As for me, as far as viewing is concerned, I prefer html to pdf. When I F11 my browser I have much more viewing space in this format.

Keep up the good work.

Hi Ed,

> I feel a real plus for this type of documentation is a section that
> ties it all together. A tutorial at the end, such as the recent water
> bottle example, would be excellent.

Yeah, the plan is that there will actually be 3 different sections to the documentation, with this command reference being one of them.

There will also be an introductory section which will give more of a general overview of how the UI functions overall, and then a tutorials section that will have some videos for building a few different models.


> Also, I would recommend a troubleshooting section containing things
> to look for when you don't get the expected results. This would save time
> scanning the forum for answers.

Since this is usually related to something in a particular command, I'll probably be trying to incorporate these kinds of things directly into the entry for each command in the command reference.

As I continue to get more questions in the forum, I will be trying to add the answers to the documentation so it should grow over time.

- Michael

Hi MaceG - thanks, I'm glad that it is helpful!

> As for me, as far as viewing is concerned, I prefer html to pdf.

Sorry I wasn't clear earlier - when I do the conversion to PDF it will just be another alternative that can be used for printing, the original HTML will still be available.

- Michael

Video tutorials would be great, but without voice or text explanations during the video they won't be of much help. Just my point of view and experience.

> Video tutorials would be great, but without voice or text explanations
> during the video they won't be of much help. Just my point of view and experience.

Hi Val - I do want to do a voice narration on the videos.

- Michael

being old school or just plain old I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it come to basic computer knowledge so be patient...I saved the file to my desktop then opened...it shows a folder with icons and a html doc when I open the doc and highlight a command explanation there is a box on the left side (for a pic.) with an x in the upper corner next to every explanation is that right?

the icon folders have the pictures for the above in it

Hi Pat - this is .zip file which is a kind of package that contains many other files inside of it.

Windows lets you take a peek inside of a .zip file just like it was a regular folder, but it isn't quite the same.

When you try to open a file from directly inside the .zip, Windows will let you do that, but it does it by extracting just that file to a temporary directory, it doesn't extract any of the other files in the .zip when you open it this way.

So to fix this, you need to extract the entire .zip package to a new folder yourself.

When you open the .zip, there should be an option that appears on the Left-side column of the File Explorer, called "Extract all files" - click this and it will walk you through the unzipping process. You can also find this option by right-clicking on the .zip file as well.

Once you have unpacked the zip file to a regular folder, you should then be able to open the html doc and see all the images ok.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you still have problems with it.

- Michael

hi mike I already got that far but when I open the html portion of the file I see the explainations but there is a box to the left side of each explaination for a image that has nothing but a "x" in the box is that right

> but there is a box to the left side of each explaination for a image
> that has nothing but a "x" in the box is that right

Hi Pat - no, that's not right, the images are supposed to be displayed there.

So you're still seeing this after using "Extract all files" to unpack the .zip file ?

When you use "Extract all files" to unpack the .zip file, that will create a new folder with the unpacked stuff in it. Make sure you go to this new folder and open up the HTML file in there, don't try to open it from the original .zip archive.

- Michael

Hi,

this looks useful and it has examples too. ;)

I will translate it once you finalized it.

MfG
sk2k

I think it's a typing error and the correct value is 0.005 units.

Petr

> I think it's a typing error and the correct value is 0.005 units.

Oops, thanks for catching that Petr, I've fixed it up now.

I also fixed up that one bug you mentioned about tapping Alt.

Not too much more to go to complete this reference section, I will be glad when it is done...

- Michael

hey mike ...sorry to be a pain ...yes it was extracted to a new folder ..when I open that folder it shows a folder labeled icons and a html file when I open the html no icons show
thanks

Hi Pat, I'm not really sure what might be going wrong...

Are the screenshots also missing? In addition to the folder labeled icons, there is also supposed to be another folder labeled screenshots as well. And there should be larger images shown in some topics like for booleans - are those also not showing up?

- Michael

I just downloaded to my laptop and everything works fine I try redownloading again on my desktop
thanks