New Instructor side pane and other help changes

Tekla Structures
2021
Tekla Structures

New Instructor side pane and other help changes

Learning Tekla Structures is now easy and smooth with the new Instructor side pane window!

Tekla Structures 2021 introduces a new side pane window, Instructor, that shows instructions for the currently active ribbon command. The Instructor side pane window gives you
  • a short description of the command

  • steps how to use the command

  • short example animations on how to use the command

  • links to more comprehensive videos and instructions in Tekla User Assistance

Instructor is available for all ribbon commands both in the modeling and drawing mode.

How to use Instructor

  1. First, open the Instructor side pane window. To open Instructor, click in the side pane.

  2. Click any command on the ribbon.

    Instructor shows the instructions for the selected command.

    If you wish to learn more about the command, click the links in the Find out more in Tekla User Assistance section in Instructor.

  3. Click any other command on the ribbon.

    Instructor content changes and shows the instructions for the newly selected command.

Create your own Instructor content

You can easily create side pane help for tools in the Applications & components catalog. Instructor shows content on selection, so the information is especially useful for giving advice to your users on choosing between different components or giving instructions before running a tool. To make full use of this feature, users should arrange their side panels so that both panels are visible. This does not replace the help feature for custom components, so you can still attach a separate contextual (F1) help page to custom component dialogs.

  1. In the Applications & components catalog, select the tool you want to add help for.

  2. Click the Add help files button in Instructor.

    A dialog box opens for creating the necessary files according to your selections. The content can be stored in the model, project, firm, or system folder. Standard folder search order is followed.

To write the help content, you can edit the generated HTML files with your preferred text editor or other editing tool, or overwrite the template files entirely.

For more instructions, see Add instructor help for applications and components.

Tekla Help Viewer removed

The separate Tekla Help Viewer has been removed. If you press F1 or Ctrl+F1, the user assistance now opens in your default web browser. With this change, we hope you find help even easier to use as you can open the user assistance content in your preferred browser without extra clicks.

You can still install an offline help package instead of opening the user assistance page directly from the Tekla User Assistance online service.

Improved status bar messages

The status bar at the bottom of the Tekla Structures window now has a new look that makes it stand out better. Many of the short instructions in the status bar have been improved to better explain the steps needed to use tools and to give you more feedback.

Access change in Tekla User Assistance

Support articles are no longer restricted to maintenance users. You can now view support articles without logging in to the Tekla User Assistance service. This makes it simpler and faster to use the service and ensures that all our users have access to the information they need even if accounts are not correctly set up or when there are problems logging in.

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