line_drawings tagged posts

In these economic times, imagine what a 25 to 40% documentation process reduction could mean to the competitiveness of your company.

Take a look at what Acqualux, a UK based company, has been able to achieve with 3DVIA Composer. The full press release can be viewed here. The following is a notable highlight from this announcement:

“We have to provide layman-level instructions to the end customer as well as detailed instructions for our service and quality control people so they can walk consumers through the build when they don’t understand something,” said Aqualux Design Manager Neil Harrison. “3DVIA Composer was a huge leap forward for us in producing documentation...

In Markus’ third installment, watch how he creates interactive 2D documents by using the linking ability in 3DVIA Composer. We know that not every use case can utilize interactive 3D documents. Many times you still need traditional 2D output, and you can see how easy it is with 3DVIA Composer to create hotspots in the output so that you can create a series of wonderfully connected 2D technical illustrations.

Thanks Markus, this is a great tip!

Have you ever spent hours to create a complicated exploded view, with thrust lines and callouts, only to have to re-do it when engineering makes a change on you?

This week, Tod Cruikshank shows us how to quickly create exploded views for technical illustrations. While in animation mode, he uses an innovative set of 3DVIA Composer functions to complete his demonstration. In particular he:

• uses “associative paths” to create jagged thrust lines in one easy step;
• uses a combination of assembly motion and part motion to create those thrust lines;
• moves one part in an assembly, and then quickly applies that placement to other selected parts;
• creates convenient hot keys to further increase the pace of his work.

When I first saw this technique, I was blown away at how fast these illustrations c...

 

This blog post got me thinking about the way that technical illustrations have evolved over the past few years, from the days of airbrushing and photography to a new digital era of creating illustrations on a computer. It also got me thinking about a January 2008 article in Intercom magazine, entitled “Three-Dimensional Illustration for Technical Communicators” which has this to say about the evolution of technical illustrations from flat 2D images into robust 3D images:

“You don’t need to be a skilled illustrator to create effective 3-D graphics. Three-dimensional illustration allows the technical communicator to respond quickly to project changes and create imagery appropriate for most publications or multimedia...