You've installed Inventor 2012 (or a later version) and everything went well. But for some reason the help files and tutorials files didn't install. Was there a check box that was supposed to be checked or something?
Solution:
In order to reduce the install footprint and speed up the install process, Autodesk has changed the way they distribute the full edition of the help files and the tutorials files that installed by default with earlier versions of Inventor. To obtain these files you can follow this link and download them:
Latest Inventor version files:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=16463987
2012 files:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=18715627
Note:
From the install instructions it appears that you can only access the full version of the help files while offline. If you are connected to the internet Inventor will automatically connect to the online Wiki-help pages. I find the wiki help to be impossibly slow, and would prefer to have a way to set Inventor to always use the downloaded help files if I choose to do so. I suppose the idea is to provide the help files in a way that allows them to be updated periodically by Autodesk, so that mistakes and omissions can be fixed. This makes sense, but Wiki pages are simply too slow. If I find a way to force Inventor to always use the downloaded files I'll report back.
Update:
There is a setting to allow you to use the downloaded version of the help files rather than the online version:
- Edit the file <install folder> \Inventor 2012\Bin\HelpIds.xml in Notepad
- Find the string “UseOnline”
- Change the value from 1 to 0 and save the file.
- Restart Inventor.
Credit and thanks go to Ale at the Being Inventive blog, for posting this solution:
http://beinginventive.typepad.com/being-inventive/2011/05/using-the-inventor-2012-full-help-even-if-you-are-online.html
http://beinginventive.typepad.com/being-inventive/2011/05/using-the-inventor-2012-full-help-even-if-you-are-online.html
And here is another nice tip from Bob at the Being Inventive blog for tweaking the help files:
http://beinginventive.typepad.com/being-inventive/2012/04/when-context-help-does-not-show-you-the-right-context.html