I was disappointed about the lack of PDF documentation in Maya 2012. I use to read the pdf’s on the bus etc. The web based help is ok, but I really prefer paper books, and second to that comes PDF. Web based help is better when searching for answers to a specific problem at hand, but I like the ability to scroll around in the pdf file, stopping by the interesting sections.

I see from this post that the Smoke, Inferno etc guys have had their prayers heard:

PDF Documentation at last!

Would have been nice too have some pdf’s for Maya 2012 as well!?

Don’t forget:
The time is Now!

I imagine the PDF file size would be pretty substantial - and having it online allows Autodesk to update it as they please - without forcing everyone to redownload…

n8skow [FA]

I would second this. While AD has a point about being able to maintain the documentation better, people are downloading and installing it because, frankly, we often have lousy internet connections, or need to work offline on laptops because we have limits on our data plans.

But one additional aspect of a PDF file is that you can open those on a Kindle, or similar device. Everything grows to accommodate all available space, and even with two monitors I never seem to have enough screen space, with Maya using some detached views and a script open in Notepad++ and so on.

Surely Autodesk could figure out some automated method of converting all those HTML files into a PDF for us, so we could get an updated version from time to time.

<* Wes *>

http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2012/en_us/index.html

By default, your installed version of Maya 2012 launches the Help from the Autodesk.com Web site. You can download and install a copy of the Maya 2012 Help using the following instructions.

link for help archive:
http://www.autodesk.com/maya-helpdownload-enu