TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I was a design and test engineer for 18 years before moving over to
documentation, and what works in B, C, D, etc., engineering drawings
does not work in user manuals, especially if they're being done in
8.5x11 printed format. In manuals, line art needs to have line width,
unlike CAD drawings where zero line width is SOP, and arrowheads and
dims should be a uniform size and format from figure to figure whenever
possible. We routinely create figures from CAD drawings by importing
hidden line views into an illustration program, strengthening the line
art and stripping the original CAD dims off and redoing them in a more
manual-reader-friendly callout format. Merely transferring the default
CAD lines and dims into user manuals is what I'd expect to see from an
engineer writing his/her own manuals using a CAD app and MS Word, not
from a professionally published user manual.
And I've always found those #$%^& tiny arrows just as hard to see in CAD
drawings, BTW.
Gene Kim-Eng
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nancy Allison" <maker -at- verizon -dot- net>
> My current document provides graphs of waveforms, and arrows are
> placed on the waveforms to point out changes in the opening and
> closing of electrical switches.
>
> I'm working with an engineer who is very insistent on using what I
> consider to be vanishingly small arrowheads in these illustrations.Â
> He explains that the size of the arrowheads should be determined by
> CAD dimensioning, which it appears is a well established standard in
> the CAD/CAM world.
>
> (We're not using CAD/CAM; we're using Framemaker and I am creating the
> arrows using the Graphics tool box. We are talking about the
> difference in size between 90/30/6 and 90/16/12. Although I think my
> reviewer would prefer something even smaller than 90/30/6.)
Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-
