Credit.

This was found on the AutoCad Forum at: www.dczaland.com/appinatt

The poster was "Hendie" (Knight of Cad Team)

The actual posting url (as at 23Mar 03) was: www.dczaland.com/appinatt/?act=ST&f=18&t=340&

Note: Although much of the following (grey background) posting is acknowleged as coming from the AutoCad Help file, the truth is his description of how to find the information under the Autocad Help Contants tab was a little too brief. See my more detailed explanation of how to find the Help reference at the bottom of this page. His automatic signiture specifies his equipment as Win 2000 and A2000.



I've seen this topic cropping up a few times recently and thought this may be of interest.
It's a lot easier than some people think to modify the Acad help file to include your own stuff.
The following is from the Acad Help file under Help Contents tab, adding HTML files

If you want easy access to remote Web sites or if you want to use HTML as documentation for custom applications or company standards, you can set up AutoCAD to have easy access to this information. The following sections present methods that AutoCAD provides for accessing these files.

Adding HTML Files to the Contents Tab

You can add your own HTML files, or links to Web pages on the Internet to the Contents tab of the AutoCAD Help system. The include.cnt file defines additional entries that display on the Contents tab. For more information about CNT files, see "Windows Help System Components."
For example, if you want to be able to easily access your HTML documentation, "stuff1.htm", "stuff2.htm", and "stuff3.htm", in addition to a few important Web sites, create the "MOREHELP.cnt" file with the following contents using a standard text editor like NOTEPAD:

    1 My Own Help Stuff
    2 My Help Files
    3 Stuff 1=!EF("stuff1.htm","",4)
    3 Stuff 2=!EF("stuff2.htm","",4)
    3 Stuff 3=!EF("stuff3.htm","",4)
    2 Dans Web Site
    3 dczaland=!EF("http://www.dczaland.com","",4)
    3 dczland Forums=!EF("http://www.dczaland.com/appinatt/","",4)
    3 dczaland Software=!EF("http://www.dczaland.com/software/","",4)

Then (create and) add the following line to the "INCLUDE.cnt" file:

    :Include morehelp.cnt
Note: remember to include a carriage return <enter> after the last line in each of these two files. And of course, to make sure that the files are in your Acad support path !

Now, Delete the ACAD.GID file. If this file is not deleted, your additions to the Contents tab may not be displayed. The next time you run the acad.hlp file (from File Manager or Explorer) or choose AutoCAD Help Topics from the AutoCAD Help menu, the Help file recompiles and your new entries are displayed after the existing entries. ... and you can get to DCZALAND directly from the Acad help file !



I found the AutoCad 2000 Customizing Guide image below by searching under the Autocad 2000's Help->Index tab for "CNT" and clicking on the "CNT Files" reference that was offered (see the two images immeadiately under the Customizing Guide image). Having thus found it I was able to use the heading to track it down from the Help->Contents tab thence AutoCad2000 (I use MDT so several packages come up) -> Customisation Guide -> Chapter 1 -Customisation Basics -> Custom Online Documentation.

At this point you can select from three topics namely Windows Helpfiles, HTML Files and AutoCad Helpfiles. The image below results from choosing HTML Files -> Using HTML Files with AutoCad. There is much more useful information pursuing the Windows Helpfiles topic which is obviously the source of the posters provided example above but there is too much information to present here.

Interestingly I went to all these lengths because I found nothing similar in AutoCad 2002 Help. Scroll further on down to see the brick wall I ran into (so far) with A2002 with Today! Grr.




 



My Autocad 2002 Brickwall!
The A2002 Help index showing no reference to .CNT files (on the left) and the expanded Help Contents Customisation Guide showing no reference to adding to the Help files. One assumes that if you follow the A2000 instructions all will be well but I'd do it on a computer at work first!

 

o0o