Command Palette and Help Where You Are
You don't need to know where something is in the menus to use it. The command palette finds any command, tool, setting, recent drawing or help page by a word or two of its name, and the help for whatever you are working on is a key or a click away, beside it, without leaving the app.
The command palette
View › Command Palette… (Ctrl+K, or Ctrl+Shift+P) opens a search box at the top of the window. Type a word or two of what you want: each word you type must be in its name or in the menus it is in, in any order, and capitals and accents don't matter (circ finds Circle, all export finds File › Export › Export All Formats…).
| It finds | Shown with | Choosing it |
|---|---|---|
| Every menu command you can use now, and the extensions' commands | The menus it is in (File › Export) and its shortcut | Runs it, as the menu item does |
| The tools: your industry's, and every other industry's | Its place in the menus; Other industry for another industry's tool | Picks up the tool |
| The settings that are on or off (Grid, Rulers, the panels …) | On or Off | Turns it over |
| The drawings and designs you opened lately | Its folder | Opens the drawing, or runs the design |
| The help's pages, by their titles in the contents | Opens the page in the Help panel |
↑ and ↓ choose (Page Up and Page Down move further), Enter or a click runs the one chosen, and Esc (or a click outside it) closes the palette without running anything. What you used lately comes first, marked used lately, the last one at the top, so the commands you use most are one or two keys away.
In Simple mode, the palette still finds everything: what Simple mode hides from the menus is marked Advanced, and choosing it works as it does in Advanced mode. File › Extensions › Run Command… opens the same palette.
Help where you are
- F1 shows the help for what you are working on: in a panel, the panel's page; in a dialog, the dialog's section; in a drawing, the page of the tool in use; on a 3D page, live editing. Help › Help on This does the same.
- Each panel has a ? in its title bar (Properties, Variables, Points, Layers, Tool Options, Interactive, Parts), as do the 3D page's Variables and Scene panels, its fold-order timeline and the measuring bar under it. It shows the panel's help in the Help panel.
- Each dialog has a ? at its top right: the options of every import and export, Drawing Properties, the message of Send by Email, Tool Shortcuts, Run Parametric's questions, Make Die's and the others. It opens the dialog's help in a pane at its side, so you can read it as you fill the dialog in. Links in the pane open there; Open in the Help panel moves it to the Help panel, and ✕ (or the ? again) closes it.
When the help shows one section of a page, a link at its top shows the whole page.
What a tool is for
Hold the pointer over a tool on the toolbar: its tip gives the tool's name, a line saying what it is for (the first sentence of its help page) and where it is in the menus.