Plug-In Help System

Plug-In Help System

Plug-In developers may add on-line help for their applications and make this available to users via the 3ds max Help menu.

From the 3ds max Help menu is a choice Plug-in Help... When selected, this brings up a dialog with a list of installed help systems. The user may select one (by double-clicking or selecting and clicking on Display Help) and that help system's main menu will be activated.

Help files for plug-ins are specified in a separate [Help] section of the PLUGIN.INI file. The syntax is:

Description of the helpfile=c:\path\to\find\the\helpfile.hlp

The description is the string that will appear in the list that pops up when you select Plug-in Help, and the specified .HLP file will be loaded when the user asks to see the help.

For example, the following lines added to PLUGIN.INI would add the SDK Help file to the list of choices.

[Help]

SDK Help=C:\MAXSDK\HELP\SDK.HLP

Note: For 3ds max 2.5 and later, developers may use help files in either .HLP (WinHelp) or .CHM (HTMLHelp) formats.