Software for creating technical manuals 4

[brandonb73]

I am in the process of re-formatting and updating our company QC Manual. Currently the bulk of the manual is in MS Word with forms and other illustrations from separate Word, Excel and Adobe Acrobat files.

MS Word seem to be rather cumbersome at combining all these different file types into one single document. My question: is there a better software program to accomplish this task?

 

[KENAT]

Adobe? Although I haven't used the full version but I believe that's what folks I have worked with sometimes do.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[btrueblood]

Agree with Kenat, get Adobe Acrobat Pro or similar. It allows you to "print" from any app. to adobe files, then concatenate adobe files to a single .pdf

 

[Ron]

As Kenat and BTB noted, use Adobe Acrobat. I use the full version and it will combine all those formats into one document. If you'll leave the page numbers out of your base documents, you can then number the page numbers in Adobe(version 7 or later) to accommodate the whole document or chapters or any way you want to set the numbering.

 

[zdas04]

Acrobat is the way to combine the various document types, but each document needs to be created and maintained in appropriate software. MS Word is an outstanding word processor (lousy spreadsheet, database, or picture editor). Unless you want imbedded spreadsheets and stuff on a page, the way I do what you're trying to do is put place holders in the MS Word and then generate a .pdf. Then I can go in and delete the place holders and insert the external material. Still kind of cumbersome, but unless you are willing to make different MS Word files for each section of your manual (not impossible) then it seems easiest.

For what you're working on, the key seems to be your naming convention so you can pick all the files from a list in one swell fwoop.

David

 

[ctopher]

I agree using Acrobat. MS Publisher may also be used, then saved as a PDF.

Chris
SolidWorks 08, CATIA V5
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

 

[looslib]

For a one-off or two-off manual, stick with the MS/Adobe methods mentioned. For a tech pub department, try ArborText, expensive, but it can do some pretty impressive things.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[nrostrander]

MTC: Keep it simple. We use MS Word Office and Adobe for the documents, then link the sections togather using our PDM software. It's much eaiser to maintain, as seperate sections linked thrugh the database. Then just "pdf" the relesed versions and put them on a company intranet.

V/R
Nathan
CAD Technician/ISO Director
Compass Systems, Inc. (

http://www.compass-sys-inc.com/

)

 

[kontiki99]

You may want to consider your authoring from an IT perspective. I know a lot of airline manuals and documents are now authored in XML and SHTML.

There are also packages out there that allow you to record the authorization or approval paperwork behind every sentence, if the audit trail is important.

Our department now has an engineering standard practices wiki where all engineers in the group can post their ideas on best practices. It is moderated.

 

[Noway2]

In a vein similar to XML and SHTML, but more geared towards publication would be LaTex. It is a markup langauge that has excellent and unparalleled suppoort for equation writing and formatting of figures, tables, etc.

Being a markup language, you write in your favorite text editor and then 'compile' it.

 

[drawoh]

Noway2,

I use LaTeX here at home on my Linux box. I love it. It generates good looking documents. It creates good looking, navigatable PDFs, and navigatable web pages, albeit, not particularly good looking. There is a latex2rtf converter, but it is not very intelligent.

I strongly recommend as a reference A Guide to LaTeX2e - Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users, by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly.

Your changes of getting people to adopt LaTeX are slim to none. Here on Linux, I have learned to use the GNU programming tools, particularly GNU "make". I don't know how convenient LaTeX would be on a Windows box.

Graphics integration is not particularly convenient. There is no way to use other people's documents as is.

The OP should closely study the style menus under Microsoft Word, and the Free Software OpenOffice. This is a powerful formatting tool which few people understand and appreciate. It should not be particularly difficult to teach, and it may save you having to pay for expensive, hard to access software.

JHG

 

[jmw]

I use Serif Page Plus X2.
This is has some pretty powewrful graphics/drawing tools as well as a range of text effects and so on.

I can publish to web or publish as *pdf files with the option of making the pdf files compatible with various printing requirements or web publishing needs.

It has a full range of import facilities also.
I have used it to prepare technical manuals, brochures, tri-folds etc.
I even used it to design my earliest website (I now use Serif's web design package for that).
I find it a good value for money package.

Try here for some free versions to try out. You can upgarde to the latest usually at a competitive price.

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/

If you go there, download Drawplus as well. Page Plus and Draw plus have very similar graphics but here are a few tools in the one that you may need. I often design and draw in Draw plus and cut and paste into pageplus.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Noway2]

Drawoh,

As you correctly pointed out, it works very well on a Linux box, which is what I primarilly use. In the instances where I am forced to use that other system, I spend quite a bit of time in Cygwin.

For Windows applications, I use a combination of Miktex and Lyx. Miktex is probably the best tex implementation for windows and Lyx is good at bridging the gap for those who are used to a WYSIWYG tool such as Word. Miktex has the nice feature that it will automatically search and find missing font packages for you. It still isn't as seemless as the --nix implentation, but it isn't half bad.

My advice for anyone who is reading this post, is the same as we were told as kids when faced with an unusual food: "try it, you'll like it". Once I started to get away from Word and realized that the pain was unnecessary, I have been loath to go back.

Thank you for the reference recommendation. I have read the "Not so short introduction to Latex" and "Latex for the impatient", but I didn't think either of them was that great.