SolidWorks documentation steps firmly into the stone age

This is a screen shot of the help that describes an interface used to create interfaces. So it’s help about the interface. The function was described in the What’s New for 2008, but it never made it into the 2008 software. It was called Create PropertyManager on page 7-2 of the What’s New For 2008 pdf.

What is it that you find missing from the screen shot? Yes, it’s blurred, but you don’t need to be able to read the text in order to see what’s missing. You know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”? And the other one that says “a video is worth a thousand pictures”? You remember several years back when SolidWorks started putting little videos scattered throughout the help and people seemed to like it?

What’s missing from this screen shot is a picture of the interface. How are you going to describe the interface without showing a picture? By using words? No way. They don’t have a thousand words here, not by a long shot.

SolidWorks aims to remove all screen shots of the interface that contain text that needs to be translated. Translation costs are apparently soaring, so it means they can make software for you, but it is going to be more and more driven by icons, and they can write Help documents, but they will be entirely text and icons.

This is being done entirely as a cost cutting move. To my knowledge, the people making documentation are the only people at SW Corp that exhibit any sort of concern for frugality at all. What do you think about that?
I guess I should thank SolidWorks. With help documentation that is utterly useless, the market for third party books is going to go up.