Arbortext Catalog

[Cosmo]

Hi All,
I know nothing about Arbortext.....but we have a need at my company to create catalogs for our product lines (both web based catalogs and print catalogs). We currently manage this catalog using autocad. A typical catalog will have a 2d drawing layout page showing some high level dimensions and a table showing all the variations on those dimensions. NOTE: the drawing does not need to be updated in the catalog ever. The next catalog page has a text based list of options for this family of product (so each product family has two pages in the catalog).
Our requirements are:Must have rev control on each catalog pageMust be able to generate a full catalog (combining all pages) easily and in a variety of formats (HTML, PDF, etc.)Must be able to include nice flashy images, colors, etc. like a publishing software would do.Must come with an editor or page maker tool that non-technical people can use to create catalog pagesMust be easy to use and implement
My question is......is Arbortext the product I should be looking at for this? It's not exactly clear on PTC's website how it all works. So I'm looking for some frank answers and opinions.
We currently use Pro/E (and some autocad) for our product designs and we use Windchill (PDMLink) for CAD data management and document management. I believe that Arbortext should work nicely but as I said....I'm not sure.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Mike -

[ptc-953343]

>
> Hi All,
> I know nothing about Arbortext.....but we have a need at my company to
> create catalogs for our product lines (both web based catalogs and print
> catalogs). We currently manage this catalog using autocad. A typical
> catalog will have a 2d drawing layout page showing some high level
> dimensions and a table showing all the variations on those dimensions.
> NOTE: the drawing does not need to be updated in the catalog ever. The
> next catalog page has a text based list of options for this family of
> product (so each product family has two pages in the catalog).
> Our requirements are:Must have rev control on each catalog page

- can be done, but you would have to implement the DTD and stylesheet to
make this happen

Must be
> able to generate a full catalog (combining all pages) easily and in a
> variety of formats (HTML, PDF, etc.)

- You would probably manage it as a merged system. I would think this
would be 100 times easier than your AutoCad process. Arbortext is XML/SGML
based soit can be easily processed into any of those formats as well as
allow you to generate various combinations of information, or different
page layouts/sizes. For isntance, you could make a salesmans pocekt guide
vs the entire catalog with all the details.

Must be able to include nice flashy
> images, colors, etc. like a publishing software would do.


- The answer here is most likely yes, just depends on how flashy you need
to get. More importantly is how much control you want on indiviudal page
layouts.

Must come with an
> editor or page maker tool that non-technical people can use to create
> catalog pages

- Arbortext is an XML/SGML editor. There are many non-technical users of
this tool, but there are many that complain abou tthe complexity which to
me is a technology issue more so than the tool. What are these people
doing? Are they creating content or changing layouts? The whole XML
process is very suited for driving this sort of operation from a database
(at least for the part numbers and dimensions you mention) so there might
not to be as much a need for people to touch the data.

Must be easy to use and implement

- That is all relative and based upon who you have on staff. This won't be
an out of the box solution. You will need a simple DTD or structured
design for the content and then you will need to write one or more
stylesheets. So you would have something for generating PDF pages and
something for the HTML.

> My question is......is Arbortext the product I should be looking at for
> this? It's not exactly clear on PTC's website how it all works. So I'm
> looking for some frank answers and opinions.

- Many catalogs are produced with the Arbortext editor plus some sort of
composition/printing tool. You can use Print Composer or the APP
application (the later being more flexible and expensive). You can also
use tools like InDesign/FrameMaker, etc to suck in the XML and do your
layouts or even open source tools like Apache FO.

> We currently use Pro/E (and some autocad) for our product designs and we
> use Windchill (PDMLink) for CAD data management and document management.
> I believe that Arbortext should work nicely but as I said....I'm not sure.
> Any advice would be appreciated.

- All these tools from PTC work well together. You might want to consider
IsoDraw for graphics or just stick with the AutoCad files. You will need
to create a CGM or jpeg file for each of the drawings so they can be used
in the editor and publishing process.

..dan

> Mike -
>
>
>

[ClayHelberg]

Hi Mike-



Yes, Arbortext would be a great way to go to get your catalogs generated
from your product data, especially since it sounds like you're already
using most of the PTC line of products (Pro/E and Windchill). Arbortext
can be directly integrated with Windchill to coordinate documentation
(including catalog information) with part data.



Arbortext comes with an editor that can be used to design documents (or
portions thereof). However, the real power of Arbortext is to
automatically generate content from your part data. If you have a
consistent format for catalog pages, and complete part data for the
parts that go into the catalog, the majority of effort in producing a
catalog can be automated. You will still need authors to create
descriptive text, and illustrators to create the images you need (though
even a lot of that can be extracted from CAD data if it's done right).
But with this kind of solution, your authors spend more time getting the
actual information content right and less time worrying about selecting
fonts, tweaking whitespace, and other such things that eat up time with
simpler tools like FrameMaker or Word.



With Arbortext Publishing Engine, you can produce a variety of outputs,
including PDF, HTML, Microsoft HTML Help, and Digital Media packages (a
kind of self-contained HTML-based delivery system that can be hosted
locally or run as a web application). You have a great deal of control
over the formatting of each output type via stylesheets. The corollary
is that you will need someone to develop stylesheets to give the
formatting you want. Arbortext Styler can ease the process of stylesheet
development, but it still takes some specialized skill, and might be
something you would want to have PTC or a third-party consultant help
you with. Generally, once the initial stylesheets are developed you
don't have to do much with them again, unless you change your mind about
the formatting you want, or you add something new to your data model.
Making minor adjustments to an existing stylesheet (e.g. making part
numbers in a table bold) is pretty easy using Styler.



Revision control would most likely be handled by Windchill. This is
usually done relative to source content rather than pages in the output,
but in your case it sounds like these things will map pretty directly,
so it should serve your purposes fine.



--Clay

[ebenton]

The trickiest requirement would seem to me to be the "Must have rev control on each catalog page" one. Slip-sheet change pages are always problematic. PTC does have an Arbortext application that can produce them, but I think that you usually have to have MIL-standard DTD like 38784(CALS) or something related.

[ptc-953343]

> The trickiest requirement would seem to me to be the "Must have rev
> control on each catalog page" one. Slip-sheet change pages are always
> problematic. PTC does have an Arbortext application that can produce
> them, but I think that you usually have to have MIL-standard DTD like
> 38784(CALS) or something related.
>

Oh how we read into requirements our own interpretation. I made the
assumption this was just the need to indicate changes and maybe flag pages
with changes. The above answer is about the whole loose-leaf publishing
process where you want to send out packages of changed pages and not the
entire catalog when there is an update. And yes that is a whole other
level of complexity.

We need some more specific details to help any further. Simple answer is
yes catalogs can be produced with Arbortext tools. Is it the best tool
will depend upon the more detailed requirements/questions. It certainly
should be easier/better than using AutoCAD for this purpose.

..dan