As recently as last week’s beta there is no help available despite the redist download being over 1GB. Is there some kind of plan or date for this to be included or downloadable?
Hello - do you mean the Help panel is not working?
-Pascal
Well, yes. The V6 WIPs and betas have never had working local help for me. In my OFFLINE installations on my machine with NO internet connection an attempt to use the help just brings a do-nothing wait terminated with a message that the website is not available - in other words Rhino seems to try to get the help from your website the same as if the machine had web access. I have assumed (or maybe been told) that there was no help available for the local machine while V6 was under development, but I thought that now V6 is in beta it was appropriate to ask again. If I am confused, this would be a great time for some guidance.
I also just noticed I used the word “commandline” in the topic title. Just “command” would probably have been better.
@pascal: This is still the case with the 12-12-17 beta. Can you tell me whether the help file is installed with the offline installation. and if so where it stored on my disk? I took a look in the advanced options and found nothing that looked like a switch to let Rhino know the help was stored locally and should use the local copy.
@brian: Even more generally: can you tell me whether Rhino 6 is even planned to have local help available for offline installations and if so, how it is supposed to work from an installer point of view and how Rhino is supposed to know to use a local copy? And whether the user is expected to configure it or whether it is automatically configured by the installer?
That link does something ‘strange’ …
I think that’s an incomplete link.
Try this instead:
https://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/6/help/en-us/index.htm#information/welcome_to_rhinoceros.htm
Thanks, John.
So by this you mean that you can’t find any provision for a local help file?
The link you showed and which John amended is great for someone who doesn’t want context-sensitive help and wants to keep a separate internet-connected computer, cellphone or tablet next to his/her offline workstation to manually lookup each command as required. Kind of defeats one of the better features of Rhino IMHO.
I guess we’ll have to wait for @brian to chime in.
Hi @AlW at this point we don’t have a facility for local help. It might be possible to package up the HTML from the online help and put it somewhere locally for Rhino to look for. But this isn’t going to be done for the initial release of Rhino 6. I’ve logged this feature request as https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-43357
In other contexts you have assured me and the other offline users that there were indeed enough offline users of sufficient importance to McNeel that you intended to fully support them. Rhino 5 has offline context sensitive help, so I know it can be done. How in blazes did you come to the conclusion that Rhino 6 didn’t need it???
Am I the only offline squeaking wheel? Are all the other offline users so expert that they won’t need the help to familiarize themselves with the new ways of doing things?
It seems to me that it was extra work to remove the feature rather than continuing it in 6.
In other words: You’ve got to be ****ing me!
@AIW, i really feel your pain.
Countless times i’ve used F1 Key while beeing in a command to just look up some option details and it is hard to get rid of this habit. The online help decision was not the best imho. I’d like to wish for the snappy working chm offline help file as it was available in the last 2 decades…
_
c.
2 Likes
It is available now.
Kelvin
Once it is downloaded and installed, how to access the help?
The help menu in Rhino6 still opens the online version.
And in the Windows startmenue, there is nothing to find.
C:\Program Files\McNeel\Rhino Installer Engine\x64\rhiexec.exe
Right-click on this file and select Properties > Details. What’s the version number?
Is your Rhino 6 the latest version?
Do you have this folder?
%LOCALAPPDATA%\McNeel\Rhinoceros\6.0\Localization\en-US\Help
(This is the path for the English version.)
If the files are installed properly. The Help panel and F1 key will open the offline help files. There is no shortcut in the Windows start menu.
There is a problem in the older Rhino installer engines. The “Anyone…” option can be selected. The files won’t be installed if you select “Anyone…”. You’ll have to select “Just Me”.
Yes.
No.
Only this one:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\McNeel\Rhinoceros\6.0\Localization\de-DE\Help
Seems they are not
I had no other chance than “Just me”, the other option is greyed out.
You are using the German version of Rhino, right?
Yes, I do.
I tried to install the German offline help. It works as expected.
When I press F1, the local help is opened.
When you open %LOCALAPPDATA%\McNeel\Rhinoceros\6.0\Localization\de-DE\Help
What is the complete path? I’m wondering if there are special characters in the path.
What is your default web browser?
Thanks,
-Kelvin