Tuesday 18 March 2014

Revit: online help not very helpful

While copying windows along a wall I got a rogue "can't cut instance out of Wall" error, and decided to try my luck with the promising "More Info" button in the error message window.




Well, turns out the info that button provides is not very helpful:

The button leads to an online help page, and lands on a nonexistent page. This isn't an isolated problem: I tried hitting F1 in a few other dialogs, and most of the time that led me to a similar missing page. The issue is not unique to Autodesk products, either: there's a growing trend to move from an offline help document bundled with a software product into an online help site, wiki, or forum. This wouldn't actually be that bad if the online help was kept up to date and the software links pointing to the site weren't broken; unfortunately, in my experience, this is not the case most of the time. At least an offline PDF is reliable and offers actual help, even if that help isn't always up to date!

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