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There are a few ways you can do this. The real problem will be getting
the cooperation of the other people to make it work.
I had to control the graphics for all of my documents, but many people
wanted to use them. In addition, they engineers had documents with
graphics that often needed to be redone since they were drawn in Word.
The minute I applied the corporate template to their documents, the
formatting when all haywire (of course).
(Note: if you have a content management system - this all becomes very
easy. But if you have to work manually, this solution MAY work).
Here is how I handled them:
1. Manuals: A subdirectory to the main manual, called "figures". Under
figures, a subdirectory called "originals". All SOURCE files, such as
PPT, visio, whatever, were stored in originals. The files in the main
"figures" directory were all stored there. The Word document Link+Embed
to those documents. Thus, no matter where the full directory moved,
links remained solid, and as long as no one updated a document, I could
send it for review, keeping figures intact.
2. Other employees: 1) training how to make their graphics outside of
Word, and how to use Paste>Special to embed as an Enhanced Metafile
(linking usually did not work with these documents because of the way
they were stored on our network). 2) Train employees on how to resize
documents and what to look for. 3) Provide a network directory where all
critical graphics were stored by category (the employees loved this); 4)
Provide a shared folder in the graphics network directory where
employees could dump all graphics they wanted to be sure were not lost.
In this case, I always asked them to make a folder with their name, and
subfolders that categorized the graphics by topic or document number.
3. Critical graphics should be controlled. We did this via document
control - for example, manual coveres, CD labels, etc. These were all
given numbers and had to be signed off. This way they could be stored
and were retreiveable. Again, we made sure to save the SOURCE file (for
example .pst) as well as the final distribution file (for example,
*.png). Naming, in this case, was usually DocNumber_Description.fileType
(example: UG-10-3333-A_OrtaCDLabelV6.png).
The main thing is to come up with a system that makes sense to your work
situation and which will be as user-friendly as possible to the people
who must live with this system. Don't forget, to make whatever system
you implement work, you will need to train people, remind them why this
is important, and probably nurse a few people through the how-tos until
the system is running smoothly.
I hope this is helpful.
Deborah
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+dhemstreet=kaydon -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+dhemstreet=kaydon -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of john -at- garisons -dot- com
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 1:34 PM
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Image repository
Hi All,
I'm in a new position and I've been given the hot potato of coming up
with
a way to manage the images that are used in documents and specs.
People create images in a variety of ways - PowerPoint (!) being the
primary tool - and are then converted to WMF and included in documents
using references (rather than embedding them).
So ... what do you recommend to:
- number or otherwise identify graphics?
- control look & feel issues - color, size, line style & weight, etc.?
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