Search Faster and Smarter in Release 17.4-2019

It won't be an exaggeration to say that the one common objective everyone has, is to get things done fast, without having to ask someone for help or getting into trouble. Nearly all possible product usage information is available with your local product installation, the CDNSHelp DocServer, or the immensely powerful Cadence Online Support portal. But, the greatest challenge lies in finding what's needed and finding it fast. Every Cadence® release comes with new features and enhancements, updated guides, FAQs, troubleshooting information, Rapid-Adoption Kits, videos, and many other supporting documentation pieces. So, let's check:

• Have you opened Cadence Help (CDNSHelp) but can't locate the topic that you require?
• Do you know where all you can find content when working on any Cadence application?
• Have you used CDNSHelp earlier and are stumped by the changed user interface in 17.4? 
• Did you ever wonder if you can search the Cadence Online Support documents without leaving CDNSHelp? 
• Do you need to search content across multiple releases or Cadence suites? 

If you have said yes to even one of these questions, read on. We have made changes in how search works, how content displays, some behind the scenes changes in indexing, and so on, all to make finding content easier. Helping you increase your productivity.

Allegro® and OrCAD® 17.4-2019 products come with the latest version of CDNSHelp. In this post, I will quickly share the changes made in this release, that will make things much simpler and before you realize it, your content searches will give you better results, and you get more done. Or, know more about what the software can do, for sure.  

Cadence Help is accessible from the Start menu and the Help - Documentation menu in most applications. Or, opens automatically when you click Help or press F1. 

Keep reading to learn more about the changes we've made.  

Welcome Page with Community Help

The first change you'll notice, if you are a regular CDNSHelp user from earlier releases, is the opening page. The basic form in the earlier releases is now replaced by a modern, web page. Changed looks are not all, this welcome page has links to popular content and community pages from where you can get information from other users and experts. You can visit forums, read blog posts, or access the training courses available, to name a few.   

Consolidated CDNSHelp Filter

You can now run a global search in one go. Global, as in every document that exists in the selected location. This is no exaggeration. Those of you who used CDNSHelp in earlier releases will notice that this is a change and a good one at that. Earlier, you had to specify what to search and where to search in two different areas. Filtering the search result to specific products or manuals was a separate setup. Not any longer. Have a look at the next demo to know what I mean.

Improved Display of Cadence Support Search Results

You can change the Search Location to Cadence Online Support and now the results are shown as tiles based on the type of content found, such as Blog posts, Error Messages, Manuals, RAKs, and so on. To view the content, you would require a valid login for the Cadence Support site. 

Breadcrumbs Support 

When you click any search result or navigate to a specific topic in the left panel, you will notice breadcrumbs. 

This makes it easy to navigate up the tree or jump to a specific topic.

Downloading PDFs 

In the interest of space, PDFs are not available in the product installation for Allegro and OrCAD products. It's just faster to open CDNSHelp and search for content. But, should you require a PDF, you can navigate to a topic and download its PDF.

Just right-click and choose the Show PDF option. In case you are offline or the PDF for the corresponding content is not available, this option is disabled. You will see a notification for any missing PDF. This displays for a few seconds and later shows as a number in the menu at the top-right (the three-dots kebab menu). 

One important caveat to note is that PDFs are available in the current session only. The next time you launch CDNSHelp, you will need to open the PDF again. 

Viewing the Library 

Those of you who used CDNSHelp earlier would be familiar with the tree that shows up in the left panel. That tree panel doesn't display by default now. To open the panel, click the Show Library icon. Here is another small video. 

For those who are new to Cadence or CDNSHelp, you can view the entire documentation that is shipped for a release from the tree. This is called the Library. 

Context-Sensitive Help and Tree Panel

Most often, you do not launch CDNSHelp. Rather, you click the Help button or press the F1 key to bring up the content for the form or dialog box that is currently open. You will notice a change here as well. Only the right panel with the content gets displayed. If you click Show Library, only the document where the content resides gets expanded. Have a look.

That brings me to the end of this post. Do explore the content we have in this release and how CDNSHelp works. You can share your views, feedback, and requests for content changes with the Send Feedback link at the lower-right corner of every screen in CDNSHelp.

So, happy searching!