Cortona3D is pleased to introduce the latest version of its technical documentation software suite, RapidAuthor 2412, which is targeted at the creation of high-quality 3D animated and traditional 2D technical documentation for manufacturing and after-sales support.
The new release is mostly focused on improvements in S1000D and DITA authoring and further integration with Teamcenter Service Planner. At the same time, it offers a wide range of time saving features in general 3D and 2D authoring.
S1000D authoring: Support for S1000D issue 6 and references to external resources
We understand the importance of being up-to-date with the latest developments of industry standards and we continuously work on reflecting these changes in the Cortona3D authoring tools. The new release allows you to create technical publications in accordance with S1000D issue 6, the latest version of this standard.
You can now add references to external resources in S1000D 4.1+ publications, easily insert and edit Control Authority information in S1000D 5.0+ documents.
The search in S1000D PM publicationpublication modules is now more accurate as information hidden by CSS styles is now removed from the HTML publications.
DITA Authoring: Customization of PDF publication, new filtering and referencing features
RapidAuthor 2412 introduces enhanced customization capabilities for the look & feel of PDF publications. The improvements allow you to apply a custom logo, adjust header and footer information, select text fonts, define the main page, and embed static pages, among other customization tasks.
Documents can now be efficiently searched and filtered when inserting them into a book (applicable to RapidAuthor in standalone mode). Group filtering is now supported for DITAVAL, a document that describes the filtering rules.
References to illustration hotspots are now supported in documents when working with the DITA Topic and DITA Task specification components.
Integration with Teamcenter: Integration with Easy Plan and new S1000D revision attributes
Release 2412 introduces basic integration with Easy Plan —a web solution for creating and managing the manufacturing bill of materials and the bill of process.
New S1000D item revision attributes now display whether the data module is valid against XSD and BREX, and whether it contains only valid references. These attributes are automatically updated when the project is saved into Teamcenter. This allows administrators to prohibit or permit the 'Distribute' and 'Prepare for Approve' operations in Teamcenter for non-validated data modules.
Integration with Teamcenter Service Planner: New importing and updating features
The new release allows for importing significantly more data types than before: Now you can import Service Process objects and all standard types of Notice and Service Notice objects. The images attached to Service Notice, Service Process, Service Requirement and Work Card objects are also imported into the document and positioned directly after the title of the corresponding step in the document.
When using the Service Planner Work Card specification component, you can update the document with all permitted changes made by the author. Previously you could only generate the document.
A new approach has been introduced to importing procedural steps, ensuring the correct display of images and warnings in their respective steps and preserving the accuracy of future updates. Unlimited nesting levels for procedural steps are now supported in the Service Planner Work Card specification component. In the generated document, the steps are flattened to three levels supported by DITA task (task/step/substep), while maintaining links to the procedural steps.
General authoring: New parameters for item search and other improvements
The item search can now be filtered by including or excluding parametric objects, PMI items, background items, items protected from section planes, and incremental import items. Previously, the filter only supported deleted, hidden, and active items.
Other improvements include an Undo operation in the Applicability Editor and a Restore Recursive command in the context menu of the Item tree.
2D Authoring: Easier editing of multiple illustrations and improved merging of illustrations
The new Combine command seamlessly merges illustrations generated in Fixed Scale Mode. When combining, all selected illustrations are automatically scaled to match the chosen illustration within the selection and aligned with it. This feature is especially useful when the illustration anchors are located outside the canvas, making manual combining difficult.
Multiple illustrations can be now edited in a single instance of 2D Editor, eliminating the need for multiple instances and saving screen space. The user interface now includes tabs for switching between illustrations.
