MotionDesigner Help Contents - Search Index - Previous Topic in this Sequence - Next Topic in this Sequence

Help | Help on MotionDesigner Help
see also: MotionDesigner Help Contents

There are two help files that you should ensure are saved in the same folder as the MotionDesigner application. These are the MotionDesigner.cnt file (the help contents) and the MotionDesigner.hlp ( the help itself) files.  The file icons look like:
and respectively.

You are now in Help, so at least you have found some help. 

Please ensure that your monitor display is set to at least 16 bits of colour - True Colour is best. You can check this by navigating to your Display settings using: 
(Start | (Settings) | Control Panel | Display | Settings Tab | Color drop down) 
Also, please ensure your screen resolution is set to at least 1024 x 768 pixels.
Any less than this, and the Jerk Control buttons of the Blend-Point Editor will not be available.

This topic is about how to use the Help Application in general, not specifically Help for MotionDesigner. 

You will see at the top of this page something like this image
.

At the very top, the so called TitleBar, you will see the little Help icon (book with ? on its cover) followed by MotionDesigner Contents.  This tells you that you are running the Help Application for MotionDesigner.

Then there is the Help Menu Bar, containing "File | Edit | Bookmark | Option | Help" drop-down command options. I find the most useful to be:
  • Bookmark: Define - this allows you to keep a list of the useful help pages.
  • Options: Display History Window - this allows you to get back to where you were, quicker than hitting the "Back" button a number of times.

    Then the Help Bar, containing "Contents, Index, Back, Print, <<, >>" 
  • The Contents Tab opens another dialogue box that gives you a structured "top to bottom" guide of MotionDesigner.  It may be useful to go through this page by page.
  • The Index Tab opens another dialogue box that allows you to search for help topics that contain certain keywords.  The disadvantage of this is it depends on how diligent and how imaginative the person is (ie the help file author - me!) is at listing all the keywords.  That is, only the keywords that the help author has entered will appear in the index list.  The user can also Find from this dialogue box, which contains every single word in the help file.
  • The Back Tab allows you to quickly return to previous help topics you have looked at.
  • The Print Tab prints the current topic.
  • The << and >> Tabs allow you to look at a sequence of topics.  The author of the help file has set up these sequences.  He will have created sequence that are relevant to the current topic.  For example, if you click on File | Open, the help author will have included all the options in the File drop-down menu in a browse sequence.