Pro/E help...yet again.

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
December 12, 2011
27 replies
11246 views

I know this may be a bit of a rant, but I strongly believe there is a fundamental lack of attention to a very critical issue all us "Pro/E and Creo"Users continue to face. I felt a post on the CAD forum was appropriate.For me, Igave up on asking for "help" from PTC resourcesover 15 years ago. I still look down at my shoes and shake my head each timeI encounter the lack "Help"within our software.

Look at the attached image and tell me why we continue to accept such unacceptable things like this?

This is not an isolated issue. You can find Help road blocks EVERYWHERE within the Help Center. In many cases we are given directions to a road that no longer exists! in this case, this is"OLD Pro/E" directions.This have been an issue since the very first day I started on Pro/E....that was 1989! My blood pressure just climbed up 50 points.

PTC, why, why, why do we have to live with a software that is NEVER complete or correct? Functioning "Help" is the lifeblood of any software. Do you wonder why Solidworks is eating your lunch? This is but ONE ofmany reasons. What good is all the "New Hotness" if we can't figure out how to use it? Is there a method to this continued madness? Please enlighten us all why this is so.

A (very old and worn out) suggestion: Start spending a healthy portion of everyone's maintenance dollars to make certain the Help Center actually Helps us.

Show previous replies

D

DeanLong

Author

1-Visitor

I was I with the Maintenence $$ comment. Mine alone.

Jim....thanks for sharing the progress. Also, please don't mis-understand my motivation behind the question/rant this morning. I am a Pro Lifer (still can't speak the word Creo) and I am still all in. I want to use the Best in Class product. We pay the best in class price, as Pro is expensive. All things being equal, Pro is still the king of the hill when it comes to homogenous functionality across the suite. But, and this is the linchpin, when simple documentation and "Ease of Use" info is easy to providebut missing or incomplete....it irks many people. And worse, it is fodder forthe competitor'sargument that PTC products are too cumbersome to learn anduse. We lose market share and potential business due to an easily repaired leak in the proverbial damn.

Dean

B

bfrandsen

10-Marble

The Help Center that comes with Creo 1.0 M020 looks exactly like Deans screen shot and not like Jims. So the Help Center in Creo 1.0 M020 is not correct.

Which version is the basis of Jims screen shot? Is the difference because of the Learning Connector?

Bjarne Frandsen

J

JimBarrettSmith

5-Regular Member

Bjarne

Dean's screen shot is from the help content for Pro/Legacy.

My screen shot is from the help content for Detailed Drawing's. I made
the assumption that Dean was trying to create a symbol in Pro/Detail
hence the delta in the screen shots. I have verified the Pro/Legacy
help content and it is incorrect so I will file an SPR so that the
content can be fixed.

As it is possible to define a symbol in Pro/Diagram, Pro/Detail,
Pro/Legacy, Pro/Weld etc searching for "symbol" will provide many
results. I filtered my results by choosing the "Show in Table of
Contents" option which allowed me to view the results by the Detailed
drawing module .

I believe this healthy conversation can now draw to a close. Where PTC
needs to make improvements have been acknowledge and will be reviewed.

On a final note I encourage you all to review the Learning connector as
I am confident PTC have already started making improvements to how help
is provided to the user. The Learning Connector

B

bfrandsen

10-Marble

Jim,
thank you for the clarification. I did not hit the "Show in Table of Contents" icon either. Maybe some breadcrumb/tooltip indication of where you are in the help system could minimize these misunderstandings.

BR,
Bjarne

In Reply to Jim Barrett-Smith:

Bjarne

Dean's screen shot is from the help content for Pro/Legacy.

My screen shot is from the help content for Detailed Drawing's. I made
the assumption that Dean was trying to create a symbol in Pro/Detail
hence the delta in the screen shots. I have verified the Pro/Legacy
help content and it is incorrect so I will file an SPR so that the
content can be fixed.

As it is possible to define a symbol in Pro/Diagram, Pro/Detail,
Pro/Legacy, Pro/Weld etc searching for "symbol" will provide many
results. I filtered my results by choosing the "Show in Table of
Contents" option which allowed me to view the results by the Detailed
drawing module .

I believe this healthy conversation can now draw to a close. Where PTC
needs to make improvements have been acknowledge and will be reviewed.

On a final note I encourage you all to review the Learning connector as
I am confident PTC have already started making improvements to how help
is provided to the user. The Learning Connector
http://www.ptc.com/products/ptc-university/learning-connector is
free and provides context-sensitive recommendations for topics,
articles, and videos as you work improving the help content provided to
new and existing users by providing results from PrecisionLMS (eLearning
topics and videos), Technical Support Knowledge Base (Knowledge-based
articles) and the Help Center (Overview, procedural, and example
topics).

Thank you all for your comments and feedback

Jim

B

BenLoosli

23-Emerald III

Using the internet to get to helpful solutions does my company no good as we are in a restricted environment and our work computers have NO internet access.
PTC may think that by hosting the help files on their servers they have found a low cost method of providing help to the users. In my case all the internet help files in the world are useless. Maybe I should get a discount on maintenance since I cannot get access to the help files over the internet and am not getting full value for what is being charged.

Provide accurate help files with the distribution of the software that loads locally would be a step forward.

Thank you,

Ben H. Loosli
USEC, INC.

D

dgallup

1-Visitor

Learning Connector? Never heard of a learning connector, might be helpful for my new users! So lets go to PTC technical support and look for "learning connector" documents relating to Pro/Engineer in English. Here's what we get, doesn't look like anything useful to me.

In Reply to David Haigh:

Learning connector is a separate download and install, and least it is in WF4 & WF5.

David Haigh
Phone: 925-424-3931
Fax: 925-423-7496
Lawrence Livermore National Lab
7000 East Ave, L-362
Livermore, CA 94550

PTC quality philosophy: We've upped our quality standards. Up yours.