Software for making a build manual?

[davidinindy]

I've been giving the task of creating build books for some of the machines we've designed. We have most of the machines in Pro/E, but want to use photographs so that the guys building it see it as it will look when they get the parts.
I took pictures of each stage of the build, and made notes of any special considerations.
I created the first one by editing the photos and adding arrows, detail balloons and notes with photoshop, then putting it in word, and adding a table with a table list of parts needed in each step, and adding any other notes necessary.
This is cumbersone, and I was wondering if there were programs more suited to this.
In word, if you move pictures. it is very hard to get everything else to stay where you put it. I have yet to find any way to "lock" things where they are. Additionally, if you decide to add a detail balloon, you need to go back to photoshop, deit the picture, remake a jpeg, and replace the one in word. Usually, when you delete the picture, it will shift everything around, and you end up maving stuff back again.
I know there has got to be a better way.
Thanks in advance for any input!

David

 

[looslib]

Check out Adobe and see what products they have for publishing.
Also, PTC owns Arbortext which is designed to take media content and 'publish' it in to multiple output method. As PTC says, Arbortext is to publishing as Pro/E is to parametric design.


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Sr IS Technologist
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[oldrunner]

We use Adobe's InDesign which is an upgrade of Pagemaker.

 

[davidinindy]

Thanks! I know we have Adobe Pagemaker... I'll have to check it out.
I'll also do a little researching of Arbortext.
Thanks again.

David

 

[IRstuff]

Worse comes to worst, you can always slog through it in Word and the PDF it.

TTFN

 

[Guest0527211403]

Hey David,

A company who I once did work for (as a contractor) used Quark to publish manuals. I spent a lot of time making pictures for them from Pro/E and I was pretty impressed at what the software could do. I think Quark is a competing product to Arbortext, though, so if you are using Pro/E, you might want to keep it all under the PTC umbrella.

One thing that has saved me in Word is the Group tool. You can select multiple drawing objects (lines, etc) and group them together, so you can scale and move them all at once. Problem is that you can't include a picture in a group. But- if you make a transparent box around your image and then include that in your group, all you need to do is move/resize the box in the exact same way you've moved/resized your image and the arrows and whatnot will rescale themselves to match.

 

[PSE]

PTC also (at one time) had a module called Pro process for Assembly. It allowed you to create assembly drawings/build instructions within the ProE environment. Nice thing was that it remained tied to the geometry so when a change occurred, it was already "there" for when the process was revised accordingly. Remembering, it is likely an expensive addition.

Regards,

 

[FrancisL]

How about using a Help/Document/Web generator for example

http://www.fast-help.com/

 

[davidinindy]

Interesting... Thanks for the input guys...
I think I'll stick with my process for now...

David

 

[Mech151]

To lock things in place, I insert a visio object, then insert pictures, leaders, etc inside of visio. Then the entire 'figure' can be moved around inside of word.

 

[PatCouture]

FrancisL

Do you know if the trial version of Fast-Help is usable or you have to purchase the product in order to use it for a project?

I downloaded the trial version and it allows you to create a help file, but I don't know if there is a certain number of project that you can create or it just won't allow you to save or something like that?

Thanks

Patrick

 

[FrancisL]

I think the trial version prevents you creating the actual Help/Web/Manual, or at least limits the number of topics.
Just try generating a Help file and it will probably tell you.

Francis

 

[PatCouture]

Thanks Francis

I created a test project and once I did the compile of the project, There is only a limited number of topics displayed in the help file that I created. The text in the other topics are hidden and replaced by a warning message.

Patrick

 

[Mech151]

Also, check out the new Adobie3d pdf. From Proe you can insert a view of the model. Then from adobie pdf reader freeware, the user can rotate the view, hide parts, etc...
It is $1000, much more than the standard pdf writer, but very powerfull.

 

[larrycoyle]

If you are going to be creating complete manuals with both documentation and photographs or any other graphics then your company already has a solution. Pagemaker by Adobe will work great and it is relatively easy to learn. Quark is also another very good program. In the past when I have produced catalogs or manuals I have used both of these programs with great success along with Corel Venturi.

Larry

Larry Coyle
Cylinder Head Engineering, LLC

http://www.cylinderheadengineering.com

 

[Beggar]

For doing manuals, you'd probably find Adobe's FrameMaker to be the best option but it's pricey.

For Word, are you setting your pictures to float in front of the text or leaving them set to "in line"?

Also, you may find that tables are helpful.

I have written some very long, very graphics-intensive manuals using Word and I've found it to be pretty good.

I'm not a fan of PageMaker for such things; I found it much more useful for doing single-page layouts (like advertisements, flyers, etc) than putting together manuals. I think that's what it's actually designed for.

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[SphincterBoy]

I've tried PageMaker and FrameMaker, but I think the best ($pricey$) is BroadVision's Quicksilver (formerly called InterLeaf Publisher. This bad boy is fully automated, and will re-paginated, change page numbers for figures, etc., automatically if you insert/remove pages. It is the best for doing big documents. PC Magazine rated it way ahead of the pack years ago, but I don't know if they've followed it since.

Here is the link:

http://www.broadvision.com/bvsn/bvcom/ep/programView.do?pageTypeId=8155&programPage=/jsp/

http://www/content/generalContentBo...BV_EngineID=cccdaddiljfjlmfcefecefedghhdfjk.0