What's new in RapidAuthor 2406 for Teamcenter?

⌚ Ready to save time by creating effective technical publications with RapidAuthor?

RapidAuthor for Teamcenter 2406, a technical writing and illustration solution focused on both high-quality 3D animated and traditional 2D technical publications, is now available.

This version introduces a lot of improvements across all stages of the authoring process. Several new features for data import, 3D and 2D authoring, and publishing as well as new ways to work with Teamcenter content are highlighted in this article.

📅 Integration with Teamcenter Service Planner in Active Workspace

Additional Service Planner content can be used for RapidAuthor DITA and S1000D technical publications in Active Workspace. You can now access RapidAuthor commands directly from the native Service Planner UI in Active Workspace.

⚙️ Spare parts catalog

Discover new options for import, create and publish!

With RapidAuthor 2406, you can update existing DPL tables with data from an Excel file. The data can be copied directly to the existing DPL rows or new DPL rows will be added automatically.

Often, available metadata are not enough to arrange and merge your DPL rows. Previously merging DPL rows was only possible when metadata already existed in the source file. Now you can merge DPL rows using new metadata calculated using regular expressions.

In large IPCs, it is important to know the quantity of identical items in a particular assembly. Automatic calculation of visible objects linked to a DPL table is available in version 2406 via a new publish option.

You can also use applicability filtering on DPL tables in the Generic IPC specification, to better manage and communicate context.

❎ Create more detailed illustrations

In previous versions of RapidAuthor, only the headlight was used to set the lighting for your 3D scene. That works well in most cases, but some 3D models looked too light or even flat.

With 2406, both the author and the end-user can select the best suited combination of light sources for an optimal appearance of the 3D model.

Section planes are widely used to demonstrate the internal structure of your model, but often you need to protect some parts from sectioning. In version 2406 this can be done much easier than before without changing the item hierarchy, just by adding a corresponding flag.

Easy protection from section planes with a flag

🎯 Create more effective S1000D content

Improvements to the S1000D authoring workflow make the resulting documentation more visual and easier to follow without additional navigation steps. You can now create and simultaneously display two graphics or multimedia objects in a publication. Embed graphics, audio, and video objects inline in HTML publications text, including graphic content from Capital Publisher, or continue to reference them.

Simultaneious display of 3D animation and 2D illustration in a publication

Simultaneous display of 3D animation and 2D illustration in a publication

We’ve added the Schedule schema to S1000D schemas. You can capture and represent maintenance planning information in data modules such as maintenance task lists, time limits, maintenance allocation and other info.

You can use additional S1000D improvements including:

Manage configured S1000D publications in Active Workspace
Create and publish a PDF book considering selected products from the PCT data module.
Manage applicability (ACT, PCT, CCT) and CIR S1000D data modules in RapidAuthor Administrator

⭕ 2D Authoring

Benefit from improved ellipse editing and 2D image creation and combination.

Previously, ellipses were split into independent pieces after removing a segment. This made working with them quite difficult. Now you can edit ellipse segments independently, keeping them as a single ellipse object. This is especially useful when you need to edit an ellipse partly overlapped by another object.

A new fixed scale mode in RapidAuthor enables generating 2D images in model coordinates, so that you can easily combine them in the 2D editor without manual scaling or positioning.

Other improvements in 2D authoring are related to magnifiers and editing parallel paths.

Magnifiers can now have a square or rectangular shape with rounded corners, in addition to the previously supported circle shape. A configurable tail shape of the magnifier pointer is now also supported.

The drawing of complex cable paths has been simplified as parallel paths can be now edited with a mouse in addition to previously supported parametric creation.

Edit elipse segments independently, as a single elipse object

Editing Ellipse segments independently, keeping them as a single Ellipse object

📈 Performance improvements

Loading, saving, publishing and other operations now take less time than ever before.

In addition to time-saving features described above, 2406 introduces significant performance improvements in different modules of RapidAuthor, making the authoring process faster than ever. The following operations now take significantly less time: loading, saving and publishing projects, as well as operations on a large number of items. According to the test results, such operations require 5-10 times less time than before, depending on the complexity of the model.

As part of the performance improvements, the resolution of raster images is now reduced on-the-fly during zooming or similar manipulations in 2D editor.

We’ve improved installation of RapidAuthor Connector for Teamcenter component.

You’ll also find:

RapidAuthor Administrator UI is more responsive when working with remote servers
Numerous improvements in importing S1000D data modules
New queries to search for Cortona3D DITA and Cortona3D S1000D objects by their specific attributes