History
As in previous versions of CINEMA 4D, the help system can be installed by going to the Help text at the top of the main window and choosing Help/Install Language/Documentation and then directing it to the help file that you downloaded. It may take some time depending on your system to install it but you can see a status bar located on the lower left which will show the progress. After your help file is installed, you will find a few really nice additions to the capabilities.
The first is addition is that you can now right click on a history arrow and see a list of your most recently visited help topics. This will greatly assist you in going back or forward to any area that you have already visited.
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History |
You can also quickly navigate through the help files by using the up, down, right and left cursor keys. The up and down cursor keys will navigate vertically through the menu while the right cursor key will expand a directory and the left cursor key will close the directory.
You can now do a full word search on the documentation. Something that I missed in the Release 9 pdf documentation files. You will find it easy to do a search in the help file by entering text into the search field at the top of the window. You may enter several search words at once and all pages will be displayed that contain those words. The detail slider to the right of the search bar will allow you to control the level of detail that you want your search to perform. For example, are you just searching for the term material or would you like it to go deeper and include object names, menu names, individual settings or settings in the attribute manager as well. For the latter example you would slide your detail bar completely to the right for that added functionality.
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Full word search |
If the word you are searching for may contain a prefix or suffix, then include a * in front or behind the word search to include these options. For example the word *nurbs may find the words Cloth NURBS and HyperNURBS. When the pages found appear in the left pane of your help window, you will see when you click on them that the words you searched for are in a different color in the right hand pane.
The help menu can be opened with a hotkey also. These hotkeys are preset to Cmd+F1 (Mac) or CTRL+F1 (PC)). You can also right click on any word in a window and select Show Help and the help file will open to the information concerning that word or function. Likewise, right clicking on any icon and choosing Show Help will bring up the help window displaying the information about that icon and its functions. Highlighting any text in the help file and right clicking gives you the option to choose the Copy command and copy that text to the clipboard for pasting into a file.
The option to bookmark an area of the help file is available with the ability to create, call up or delete bookmarks. You can add a bookmark by clicking on the word Bookmark at the top of the window or conversely right click on a word and choose to create a bookmark. Choosing to manage your bookmarks will give you the functions to show all of your bookmarks where you can delete them if you wish. The List function will list all of the bookmarks that you have saved and by merely clicking on one, you will be taken to that page.
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Bookmarks |
There were two things that I noticed that were a little annoying. The first and quite annoying one is that when you click on an image to view larger version of it. When you click on the left navigation button you are taken back 2 steps i.e. the page before the one you came to look at the information with the image on. However you soon learn to get back to where you were by clicking on the topic in the left hand window. The other one is spelling mistakes. Many of the new 10.5 enhancements say NEU IN R10.5 instead of NEW IN R10.5. There is also a sprinkling of spelling mistakes throughout the entire documentation. Hopefully these 2 issues will be fixed in an update before Release 11 comes out.
All in all some really nice new functions have been added to the help files that will speed your work and learning.