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The
ACIS documentation consists of online help, which is in HTML format, and PDF files. All documentation is available in online help and may also be printed to your printer in "book chapter" form from PDF files provided on the
3D ACIS Online Help CD-ROM.
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Spatial's documentation is divided into two kinds of information, each of which is presented in a format designed to communicate the information effectively:
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Theory (Discussion)
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Is presented in paragraph, or text, form. Theory includes general information about components, discussions of modeling concepts, tables, diagrams, examples, "how-to" information, etc. Theory is broken into chapters and sections (possibly with multiple levels) that each have a title heading. An online help page containing theory information is known as a "Discussion Topic."
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Reference
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Is presented in
template form. Reference templates are primarily used for documentation of
code items, such as
C++ classes, functions, etc., but may also be used for such purposes as component descriptions. Each template has a title that is the name of the item documented, such as the class name, function name, or component name.
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A reference template is a way of presenting material in a structured format with a standard set of information, using named data fields. For example, the template used to document
C++ classes includes fields such as:
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Purpose
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Summarizes the intended purpose of the class.
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Derivation
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Specifies the derivation of the class.
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Filename
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Specifies the name of the header file in which the class is declared.
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Description
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Describes the class, its use, and its structure.
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There are two types of manuals:
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General information manuals
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Cover the entire product line; these manuals usually contain theory but may also contain some reference templates.
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Component manuals
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Contain all the documentation for a single software component, which may include theory and/or reference templates.
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A manual may contain only theory or both theory and reference templates (refer to section
Manuals). Within manuals, reference templates are organized by type, where
type generally refers to a kind of code item, such as
C++ class, function, Scheme extension, etc. All the templates of a given type are grouped together and ordered alphabetically.
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In online help, information may be organized and displayed several different ways:
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Information can be displayed in the order it appears in a manual.
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Information can be grouped by
subject.
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An alphabetical list of all of a specific type of reference item can be displayed.
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A list of discussion or reference topics containing a specified keyword can be displayed.
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Information is displayed in online help as individual "chunks" called
topics. This may be different from the way the information would appear in a printed manual. For example, the reference template for a function may span several pages in a printed manual, but it is one topic in online help; or, a single page in a printed manual may contain several paragraphs, each with its own heading, but these appear as separate discussion topics in online help. Each online help topic is stored in a separate HTML file.
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