Using the Inventor 2012 Full Help even if you are on-line

You have downloaded and installed the Inventor 2012 Full Help from here and for performance reasons you want to use it, instead of the help from the Wiki, even when you are on-line.

Of course, you can simply create a shortcut on your desktop and have it point to, for instance:

<install folder> \Inventor 2012\Help_Full \index.html

But if you want to access  the help from within the context of the product or from within a dialog, do the following.

• Edit the file <install folder> \Inventor 2012\Bin\HelpIds.xml in Notepad
• Find the string “UseOnline”
• Change the value from 1 to 0 and save the file.
• Restart Inventor.

Note. Be aware that by downloading and using the help on a local drive, you have chosen to work with a snapshot version of the Help that possibly is out-of-date, contrary to the Wiki help which at all times shows the most up-to-date help information

So, if you want to go back to the default behavior, that is, to use the help from the Wiki when you are on-line, set back the value for “UseOnline” to 1.

Ale

Comments

[Triu Van Nguyen]

Thanks so much! I'm using Autodesk Inventor 2012.

[Chris]

Didn't work. I got an "Access denied" message

[Ale]

If you get this error trying to follow the steps above for editing the file HelpIds.xml, possibly you have access rights restriction for accessing to that file or folder you may want to check with the IT guys of your Company.

Regards,
Ale

[Jack Cordes]

I tried this change, and although it worked, I could not get any of the animated help files to run with useonline set to "0"

[Ale]

I’m not sure this depends from the setting suggested in this post.

I can see the animations on my machines using this setting.

For some of them you need to have the Flash Player installed.
On my machine the version is 10.3.183.5, just in case.

For other animations, like some from the What’s New, you need to install the free Quick Time Player.

I hope it helps.
Regards,
Ale