Offline references

[jKaufmann]

Just got HDpro-2020, running under Windows 10 Pro.  It looks very promising but requires a lot of steeping in how the program is structured.  There are lots of great resources, some inherently online (like video guides) and others (like the Reference Manual, general User Guide and building-case-specific user guides) in PDF that can be downloaded as needed, but. make sense to keep offline, rather than download every time. 

 

Unfortunately, from the Help menu, HD defaults to downloading the PDF files every time; it does not recognize what it has already downloaded. I've tried putting them in various likely places where the program might be smart enough to look for them (and find them first before going to download), but to no avail.  If there is such a place, I would be grateful for a pointer in that regard.

 

Short of that, I have resorted to putting these references in a "Home Designer Guides" folder, with a Windows link to the folder (and try to avoid the HD Help menu in this regard).  That works, but is still slightly clunky, and I'd like to find a more elegant way to integrate with the HD program.  Are there any better solutions?  For that matter, there is an intriguing "Manual" folder, inside the HD program folder, that appears to be the skeleton for an offline manual written in Qt5 -- but it does not seem to do anything (yet).  Is there any information on this?

 

Finally: I realize that a "meta"-type question like this might be better directed to the Support forum, but my browser warns me, "The owner of support.homedesignersoftware.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."  Is this a known issue? - a problem? - a cert out of date?

[DavidJPotter]

DJP

[DavidJPotter]

Also, I always mentor my students by making sure they know to quickly lookup and get defined any terms or symbols they are unfamiliar with while studying or using this software. If you do not understand the nomenclature, the language, then its technology and procedures will not be easily transmitted to you as the learner. English words and symbols often have more than a single "meaning" or "Definition" in a sentence, an oft used example of this is the word "of" which has 32 distinct meanings depending where it falls in a sentence, so having the correct definition is essential to the student.

 

This software is a mechanical device. In and of itself it contains NO intelligence, judgement or knowledge. It was created by intelligence and experience but itself has NONE of these qualities. So it is upon you alone to provide intelligence, planning and guidance that it needs from you to obtain a creative result.

 

DJP

[jKaufmann]

Hi David - I agree with everything you said, both in your reply video (thanks for taking the time!) and in your subsequent post. [BTW - as I've gone through the forum issues, I'm continually impressed at the quality of some of the answers, especially in quantity from you and Eric.]  The point of my post is that, regardless of the topic, I'm a huge believer in bearing down to get through the learning curve.  That's why I'm trying to keep the Reference Manual and other PDF guides quickly available offline. 

 

As you mention, it's possible to download again every time into the browser. (Firefox also supports that, or passing to a PDF client -- but no browser does as well as the PDF client software, so I rarely bother with the browser.)  But the delay and redundant bandwidth consumption (unless the browser restores from cache, as in your video) offend my engineering sensibility -- and anyway, the web is not always available.  So I was looking the a least-clunky way to bring all PDF references offline.  It could be my Windows-link (ignoring the Help menu) is the best arrangement given the constraints, but I doubt it. Hence my post.

 

As I mentioned, looking over the program files, it appears that CA may have some similar idea of an offline manual with a skeleton written in Qt, but if my inference is right in that regard, it at least does not seem to be active yet. I'm curious to see what will become of that.  Meanwhile, I'll take your point that I should ignore Firefox warning about support.homedesignersoftware.com and give them a try on these questions. [I may also ask why Firefox does not trust their site. ]

 

[solver]

10 minutes ago, jKaufmann said:

That's why I'm trying to keep the Reference Manual and other PDF guides quickly available offline. 

 

A link on the desktop is pretty quick and does not seem clunky to me

 

The Qt stuff is the built in help system -- essentially the reference manual in a different format.

[jKaufmann]

1 hour ago, solver said:

A link on the desktop is pretty quick and does not seem clunky to me

Fair enough - it does work for me; it's admittedly a minor thing, but I was hoping to do that with the Help menu. [I like to tidy up the lower-level issues before moving on.]

 

1 hour ago, solver said:

The Qt stuff is the built in help system -- essentially the reference manual in a different format.

Sorry, I missed that. How is the built in help invoked?

[solver]

1 hour ago, jKaufmann said:

Sorry, I missed that. How is the built in help invoked?

 

Are you kidding?

 

Via the help menu, or the ? icon, or F1

[jKaufmann]

No, not kidding. Just (somehow) oblivious. Sometimes there's no accounting for obtuse.

 

Thanks.