Streamline Product Documentation With 3DVIA Composer - Part 5

Part 5. Publishing effective training materials

The ongoing development and publication of product training materials—for customers, new employees, and global partners—is another area where the repurposing of CAD design data can pay big dividends for today’s manufacturers. Because the native CAD files serve as the single source for all product content, using a 3D authoring tool to customize training materials for specific groups is far easier and more efficient than crafting these materials independently. This capability is especially useful—you can create effective training materials without using the costly textual translation services once required for communicating with overseas audiences.

With integrated documentation software that can embed 3D content, markups, and animations in any ActiveX-compatible business application, manufacturers have the power to create, manage, and deploy product training documentation on a global scale, at much lower cost. This capability allows you to embed product training content in common communication applications, such as Microsoft® Word, Excel, and PowerPoint®; as a standalone executable for viewing with free player software; or in HTML format to distribute over the web.

Many manufacturers spend millions of dollars annually on professional product photography to present and market their products when a more cost-effective, high-resolution, CAD-derived image could satisfy the same need.

Check back tomorrow for Part 6 of 7 covering "Creating vibrant, exciting marketing content and web-based catalogs."

To learn more about 3DVIA Composer, visit cati.com or email us at cati@cati.com.

*This article provides excerpts from the "Streamlining Product Documentation across the Manufacturing Enterprise with 3DVIA Composer White paper, published by  DS SOLIDWORKS Corp.