Cortona3D RapidAuthor is software that generates technical documentation. Using 3D graphic information created mainly in CAD systems, RapidAuthor allows acting interactively with the graphic information while maintaining direct control of the changes made in the source data. The most popular types of documents created with RapidAuthor are part catalogs, instruction manuals (assembly, work processes, services and maintenance instructions, and training/education guides.
The creation of technical documentation has evolved into two methods: traditional and modern.
Traditional (static). There are companies that are still in the earliest stages of the technical documentation process, although they are already generating or reusing CAD modeling. They use the traditional methods and tools to create static technical documents, such as photos of physical products, screenshots of parts, manual assemblies and disassemblies (digital or real physical), dimensions, tables and notes, markups and Photoshop. The final documents are made and organized in multiple tools, such as Word, PowerPoint, whose result is exported exclusively in 2D documents, either printed on paper or digital in formats such as PDF, Word and PowerPoint.
This is a static document that has notable problems and therefore, unlike how it seems at first, is prone to a lot of mistakes. Also, it takes more time to generate and is ultimately more expensive.
Documents made with this method are not interactive. Therefore, any change in the original designs must be done manually and requires great technical effort, leading to errors and possible wrong versions. For example, let’s say we have a technical document that contains an assembly with different configurations. An update means that several of the configurations must be created again or even modified individually by image editing, including the corresponding bills of materials (BOMs). This takes hours.
Modern (dynamic). Digital documents are based on 3D graphics. They are interactive and are connected to the 3D CAD models, which means that any changes made to the original model will be immediately reflected and updated in the technical document. Another of the many advantages of this method is that the BOMs (manufacturing and services) are interactive and can easily locate an object. Likewise, the views are fully 3D, which gives them the versatility to be modified with a couple of clicks. Because the document is 100 percent digital, it can be used in animations (cinematics, assembly, etc.).
Last but not the least, the interactive 3D graphics can be accessed with a free viewer.
Cortona3D RapidAuthor is a primary tool for this modern dynamic technical document generation.
Nowhere outside of technical documentation is the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” more apt. A picture, even more so a video with animation, can replace a long and complicated explanation given in several languages. This saves time, money and effort, both in the creation of the document and in the interpretation of it.
RapidAuthor has several modules that can be extended, depending on the configuration and licenses. Figure 1 shows an example of module content.
Automatic IPC Generation … a Big Step
With this new version, you can automatically generate illustrated parts catalogs (IPC) pages directly from the data import and based on the product structure and BOM hierarchy. This is a huge contribution to automating the catalog creation process, minimizing the effort for creating IPC pages and greatly facilitating and dramatically accelerating generation times.
The generation of IPC pages is mainly based on the product structure and this new functionality allows IPC pages to be automatically produced and connected to the BOM for each assembly.
First, it is important to clarify that in order to configure this new functionality, you must have the RapidDEVELOPER license, which is an additional module for Cortona3D’s RapidAuthor tools, which allows the configuration of input/output data (Figure 2).
You can configure the IPC to display the name of the child or assembly and its child items, as well as decide its limit depth. This configuration also includes the visual characteristics that can highlight the current geometry and hide or background the rest, in addition to viewpoint (perspective or orthographic; Figure 3).
What’s New About Import of IPC Page Hierarchy from Excel
The ability to import IPC page definitions from Excel is not new to RapidAuthor, but v14.2 provides an improvement on how it is done. Not only the flat list is defined, but also the hierarchy tree now can be defined. This has the potential of simplifying the entire range.
Break Merged Objects with a New Merge Command
Unmerge is a very simple but powerful new command that allows you to separate already merged 3D geometry into its components. This merged geometry could have been done in RapidCatalog or even in original CAD modeling. To give examples of the great utility of Unmerge components, I could name two typical cases: explode components in RapidCatalog or animate components in RapidManual (Figure 5).
New Options for Advanced Visual Effects in Publishing
Version v14.2 includes several new and improved options for selection and 3D display in posts.
For 3D Selection mode: Translucent shell (Figure 6) is a great quality visual option to show in the same 3D image an internal component; Highlight with color (Figure 7) is a simple option that was available in previous versions that is used to emphasize by color the main selection objects; and X-ray selected objects is a wonderful graphic option that shows a map of all the internal objects (in translucent gray) but highlights the selected objects in color (Figure 8).
A new option, which can be combined with the previous 3D selection mode descriptions is the Outline Hovered Objects that serves to highlight the outline of the selected objects. A good example of its visual utility added to an X-ray selection is shown in Figure 9.
Finally, we have two options that improve the performance and quality of the rendering and also the smoothing of the geometry, such as Ambient Occlusion and Anti-aliasing.
Other new features in this regard are that these options for advanced visual effects and selection can be controlled and defined both in the Publish options menu (Figure 10) and in HTML publications (Figure 11).
Exciting Improvements in HTML Publications
V14.2 of Cortona3D lets us easily control the new (and existing) settings for advanced visual effects (anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, outline hovered objects and selection mode) directly through menus in HTML publications (Figure 11).
Apart from the fact that some buttons were rearranged to improve the user interface, there is more good news. It is easier than ever to visualize with the new Restore All button, which with a simple click allows you to quickly return to the original visibility and transparency of all the objects.
A new option was also introduced (Figure11) that allows you to manually control the animation of the transition between pages.
Product Cross-Reference Tables S1000D applicability information can be filtered in HTML pages and displayed in PDF, enabling you to quickly access the correct information—something that is especially useful in complex documents (Figure 12).
Let's Not Forget 2D
If you are working in Cortona2D Editor Pro now, you can easily edit the 2D CGM images with the new functionalities into a nice editor’s toolbar (Figure 13).
In addition, a great enhancement included in v14.2 is the ability to include or exclude areas to remove any unnecessary specific geometry (Figure 14) or even fill them by using a combination of buttons and clicks.
You can now change the color tone in filled objects, which are adjusted by percentage.
The El Snap function was also improved with the option to control its types.
Finally, a nice new option was added in Cortona2D Editor Pro, the Merge command, which allows Boolean operations between figures, such as union, subtract, intersect and others.
New Version, New Formats
RapidAuthor v14.2 supports several new CAD formats, including Siemens NX 2206, PTC Creo 9, Autodesk Inventor 2023, neutral Parasolid 34.1 and Revit 2023.
Teamcenter
Users working with the various RapidAuthor modules managed in Siemens PLM Teamcenter can enjoy most of the improvements of v14.2 described above, which are managed and administered directly from the Teamcenter interface.
This is a significant administrative and performance advantage of the software compared to many of its competitors, which do not have such integration with Teamcenter.
Conclusion
Digital technical documentation has become an essential tool for most companies, especially those that base designs and data bases on their CAD models. They are able to reuse these designs and bases easily and productively to generate catalogs, instruction manuals, maintenance, training, among other things.
RapidAuthor is an excellent digital technical documentation tool and v14.2 is a big improvement.