Using the Plant Simulation Help

The Tecnomatix Plant Simulation Online Help is fully integrated into the program. You can always open the help by clicking the button on the menu bar. You can also open the help without a connection to the program by double-clicking the file PlantSimulationENU.chm in the folder Help in the installation folder.

The Online Help provides these topics for Plant Simulation in the following books:

• What's New describes the new functions of the current and of the previous two releases.

  You can also open the description of the new functions by clicking the button What's New on the Start Page.

• The Step-by-Step Help describes how to solve modeling tasks that you are facing in your everyday work day.

• The Reference Help describes the objects which the tabs on the Toolbox provide. The objects are grouped just like they are grouped in the program itself in the Toolbox and in the Class Library.

• The 3D Reference Help describes the functions of the 3D component of Plant Simulation.

• The Add Ins Reference Help describes the functions of the add-in programs that you can purchase.

You can browse through the help with the buttons , just like you would leaf through a printed book.

In the Plant Simulation Online Help you can:

Open help without displaying a particular topic

To open help without displaying a particular topic, select > Contents/Index on the File menu.

Or click on the right-hand side of the menu bar of the Frame.

Open help for an object in the Toolbox

To open help for an object in the Toolbox, click the object with the right mouse button and select Help on Object.

Open help for the selected object in the Frame

To open help for the selected object in the Frame, click on the ribbon bar.

Or press the F1 key on the keyboard.

Help for an object

The help for an object in the reference help always shows these topics:

• Dialog window of the object

• Methods of the object

• Read-only attributes of the object

• Attributes of the object

The first topic describes the object as such. If we also have a sample model in the Example Models collection, we also mention that here.

The Related Topics list all topics which are of interest for the current topic. The topics themselves are extensively cross-referenced, showing for example how and for which purposes you can use the object.

Under SimTalk we list the methods/read-only attributes/attributes which correspond to a dialog item.

You can switch between the description of a dialog item and the respective SimTalk function. To do so, click the link below SimTalk/Related Topics. To switch from the description of the attribute AssemblyMode in the example below back to the description of Assembly mode, click on at the top of the window.

Open help for the Frame

To open help for the open Frame, click on the tab Home on the ribbon bar of the Frame.

Open help in the open dialog of an object

To open help in the open dialog of the object, select Help > Help on Object.

Or press Shift + F1.

Open help for the dialog Edit 3D Properties

To open help for the dialog Edit 3D Properties of the object, select the menu command Help > Help on Dialog in the dialog Edit 3D Properties.

Show What’s This Help in a dialog window

To show What's This help for a dialog item, click the question mark in the title bar of the dialog window, and then click the dialog item in the dialog window for which you need help.

Show help for Attributes and Methods

To show help for attributes, read-only attributes, and methods of the object that you selected in the Frame, press the F8 key. Then select the attribute, read-only attribute, or method for which you need help and press the F1 key.

Show Help for Keywords in Methods

To show help for the selected keyword in the Method, press the F1 key. If several index entries exist for the same word, double-click one of the sub-entries.

Find keywords in the Index of the help

As a rule you will search for topics for which you need help via keywords in the help. Type in the keyword you want to find on the tab Index and press the Enter key. If there are several entries with the same keyword, you can either double-click one of the sub-entries to show the respective topic or you can double-click the main entry and then select the respective subtopic in the dialog that opens. Show Help for Attributes and Methods describes this in detail.

Find a topic in the Table of Contents

To detect where in the table of contents of the help the displayed topic is located, click on the last-but-one expression in the breadcrumb navigation line of the display window. The breadcrumb navigation resembles navigating in the address bar of the Windows Explorer.

Or click the button.

Search in the Help

The Help Viewer provides a powerful search function on the tab Search which you can use to search for text in the help.

Navigate in the help with the Table of Contents

Searching for topics in the table of contents of the help makes sense if you are, for example, looking which object-specific attributes, read-only-attributes, and methods an object provides. In the example below we only show the read-only-attributes and the attributes of the ParallelStation.

Copy source code examples in the help and paste them into your Methods

You can copy source code examples in the help with Ctrl+C and then paste them into your Method with Ctrl+V. You can then edit the source code to meet your modeling needs.

Print the Current Help Topic

To print a help topic:

• Click a topic with the right mouse button, and select the command Print on the context menu.

• Click the Print button on the toolbar.

• Click the Options button on the toolbar and select Print.

  Note:

  When you print from the Contents tab (by right-clicking a heading/book, and then choosing Print) the viewer will display a dialog allowing you to print only the current topic, or the current topic and all subtopics.