The Help File

How to get the most out of the Help file

Using your Help File

Your application is comprised of a wide range of varying functions and tools. This Help file has been designed to give you access to information about a particular area of your system with the minimum of fuss.

The Help topics provided here include:

  • Conceptual topics which describe the general concepts and background information on how to get the most out of the system

  • Command and  Process specific topics which how to use a specific command and achieve the desired results i.e. the input data requirements, the parameters, settings, methods and output  

  • Window, Toolbar, Menubar, Control bar and Dialog help topics which describe how to use the various Studio 3 components

  • General topics which describe other information not falling into the above categories.

Context-sensitive Help topics, i.e. topics that are specific to a dialog, screen or utility, can be accessed either by using the Table of Contents on the left to navigate to the relevant area, or by opening the dialog/screen/utility in question and clicking the Help button or pressing <F1> on your keyboard.

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Studio UG's Planning panels each contain a Help button which should be used instead of pressing <F1>:

This button is found in the top right corner of planning panels.

Studio functions outside of the planning workflow will respond to <F1> for context help.

 

Recognizing Help Components

Where relevant, standard help topic components have been added to each page to facilitate the access of information. These components include:

  • Notes highlight supporting information. Whilst not crucial to the understanding of a process or command, these notes provide useful background information. Notes can be recognised by the following format:

    note.gif (1017 bytes) This is a note.

  • Tips provide you with shortcuts and general hints and tips about a given subject. Like notes, this information isn't critical to the understanding of a subject, but will allow you to perform a task in a different way, which may provide a speed, efficency or consistency benefit over other methods. Tips can be recognised by the following format:

    This is a tip.

  • Warnings provide important information about potentially destructive tasks or situations. If attention needs to be drawn to a particular part of a topic, a warning box will be provided. Warning dialogs can be recognised by the following format:

    This is a warning.

Using The Help system

The following methods can be used for navigating and finding information on the required topics:

Using the Contents Tab

The Table of Contents for this product has been arranged to ensure you can access information quickly and easily. Its layout has been designed so that you can view information on individual commands, or more complicated processes using a combination of context and conceptual Help. The following pointers may help you to find the information you need more quickly:

  • Application Concepts: topics that encompass more than one command, dialog or function are available in the 'concepts' folder of the Table of contents. The arrangement of folders, although not applicable to all situations, allows you to use a 'top-down' approach to find the information you need.

  • Core Workflow: this section contains information relating to the core business processes of your application - as displayed by the side bar containing the business processes.

  • Menu Help: if you want to know more about a particular command in a Studio 3 drop down menu, have a look at the menu overview pages. These can be found in the Table of Contents (TOC) under Studio 3 Help | Using Studio 3 | Studio 3 Menus. Select a window description to see a list of all available menu pages.

    The menu pages behave in a similar way to the menus themselves. Click an expandable area (denoted by blue emboldened text) to see a list of all sub-items:



    In many cases, the menu item descriptions will link to another page, explaining the process, command or dialog in more detail.

  • Dialogs: if you need to know more about a dialog, click the Help button or press <F1> whilst in the dialog to see context-sensitive Help. If you do not have a dialog displayed, you can use the index to find related help by typing the name of the dialog (or a close approximation) into the Index search field. In addition, all context-sensitive Help topics are listed under Help | Reference | Dialogs in the Table of Contents.

  • Reference: as well as using the index facility, you can search for a Design command or Process Help using the Table of Contents. All currently supported commands are found in this section.

Using the Index Tab

A full index facility is provided with this Help file. Where possible, synonyms and similar phrases have been added, but as a minimum, you will be able to retrieve a topic by typing in a command name, dialog title, process name or field name of a dialog. If this does not return the desired results, try varying your phraseology.

The following pointers may prove useful in retrieving information quickly and easily:

  • Commands and processes: all commands and Processes are indexed by their respective names. Enter the full name of the command to locate the corresponding help file. Also, enter key words relating to the processes or functions that the commands relate to 'Data display", "project wireframe" etc. to see a list of all viable commands.

    Also, try entering 'Command' as a prefix, followed by the full description of a process or command (e.g. "auto-correlation-analysis").

  • Menu Information: for information on a particular menu, enter the index search term in the following format:

    menu #menu title#

    Where '#menu title#' represents the name of the highest level of a particular drop-down menu, e.g. "View".

  • Menu path: if you know where, in the menu system, a particular command resides, add the menu path to the search field using a '>' separator, e.g. "applications>open pit>use rosettes' will return the command topic relating to the use-rosettes-switch command.

  • Windows: enter the prefix "window overview:" to see a list of all window overview pages, or enter the title of the window to see a list of all related topics.

  • Useful keywords: topics have been indexed by menu entries, data type, and other common phrases. If you know where in the menu system a command or function can be found, you can enter any element of the menu path (e.g. "Applications", "road layout tools", "open pit" etc. to see a list of all qualifying commands.

    You can also search for commands or topics relating to a particular data type by typing in one of the following index keywords:

    • 'block model'

    • 'wireframe'

    • 'string'

    • 'point'

    • 'drillhole'

  • Other things to try: more useful index keywords and phrases include:

    • 'interface': list all topics relating to the Studio 3 interface. Topics will not be context-sensitive.

    • 'control bar': show all topics describing control bars.

    • 'toolbar': toolbar-related topics.

    • 'data', 'data storage': list all topics referring to the saving, loading, importing and exporting of table data.

    • 'object manager': show all topics associated with the Data Object Manager.

    • 'data display', 'view': lists topics relating to how data is displayed in your application. May contain context-sensitive topics.

    • 'menu': show all topics dealing with menus.

    • 'window': window overview topics and concepts.

Generally, synonyms have been provided, so if your keywords don't return the results you want, try an alternative expression, for example, if looking for the Project Options dialog Help topic, the key words 'options', 'project options', 'set project options', 'global options', 'settings', 'program settings' and 'options dialog' will all display the relevant topic (although the extent of the  list returned will depend on the key phrase used. Other keywords exist for this topic, in fact, there are over 20 phrases. All topics have alternative search phrases.

Using the Search Tab

The full text search facility allows you to enter key words which will be searched for throughout the project - all qualifying topics will then be listed.

Single Keyword Searches

In the simplest form, the search tab can be used with single keywords. In this case there is no need to enclose the word in quotes.

Multiple KeyWord Searches

By default, entering more than one word into the search box, without doublequotes, will return topics containing both of the specified words i.e. the whitespace is treated as the logical 'AND' operator. This often leads to a long list of results being displayed. The precision of your search can be improved by using the following techniques:

  • Phrase search: surround your text with double quotes, e.g. "desurveying drillholes". This will only return topics that contain the exact specified phrase.

  • Boolean queries: use keywords and the operators AND, OR or NOT. For example, the search string "desurveying" AND "drillholes" will return any topics which contain both words; this will yield the same result as "desurveying drillholes". The search string "desurveying" OR "drillholes", will return the most number of search results.

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When searching for help on commands, enclose the command name in doublequotes e.g. "edit-attributes"; not using the quotes will treat this as two words i.e. 'edit' and 'attributes'.

 

If you are new to Studio or a particular area of its functionality, you may want to refer to the Glossary of Terms page where a list of standard terms, their alternatives and a description for each are provided. These standard terms can be used when defining search phrases.

Other Help Projects

There are several other Help projects available, and the following relate to areas of the system that have standalone help files, which are used by supporting tools and applications:

    • Legends: a dedicated Help resource for legends, including tutorials.

    • License Services: information relating to the License Server application.

    • Table Editor Help: information relating to the Datamine Table Editor facility, used for managing object table data.

    • Script Analyser Help: information relating to the Script Analyser utility.

    • Table Previewer: The Datamine standalone data preview facility is explained in detail here.

Tutorials

In addition to your Help files, your application is supported by a set of tutorials to help you understand some of the aspects of your application. These will appear using the "Stack of books" menu, shown at the upper right corner of your application, for example:

(Studio OP version shown)

The contents of this menu will depend on which Studio product you are using.