Maxscript help for 3dsMax 2012 update

I’ve written about setting up your local maxscript help-file: read it here. Alex Mak has posted a nice addition to this. Read it here on cgTalk. Now it’s very easy to make your own, local maxscript help behave exactly the same as the online maxscript help. It automatically feeds the word at the cursor-position into the search field. This is what was missing from my previous solution.

To make this happen, do the following:

• remove any code referring to the shortcut Ctrl+F1 in the user-preferences file
• download the maxscript documentation (get it here)
• add the following code to the user-preferences file

# point maxscript to a local helpfile
command.name.12.*=Find in local Help
command.12.*="blah\folder\firefox.exe" "file:///C:/blah/folder/maxscript-doc-2012/index.html?query= $(CurrentWord)"
command.subsystem.12.*=0
command.mode.12.*=savebefore:no
command.shortcut.12.*=Ctrl+F1

Obviously you need to edit the filepaths to point to your browser and help-file. When you download the maxscript documentation, you’ll get a few html-files. You need to point at the index.html. This command will actually show up in the tools-menu of the maxscript editor. The command sends the word at the cursor-position to the help-file (Currentword). This command is triggered by the Ctrl+F1 keys. Of course you can add any other key-combination.