What’s New in RapidAuthor 14.0 and Connector 14.0

Version 14.0 of RapidAuthor for creating innovative and traditional technical documentation is now available

The RapidAuthor product family allows the authors to create a wide range of technical publications for manufacturing and after-sales support for use on desktop and mobile platforms and Augmented Reality applications. Thanks to the integration with Teamcenter, the documentation can be easily updated as changes happen in the product lifecycle. The result is high-quality and accurate parts catalogs, job cards, and maintenance manuals for your end-users.

RapidAuthor 14.0 introduces expanded integration with Teamcenter portfolio, significant improvements in 2D generation and editing, and parametric object usage.

In RapidAuthor 14.0 a static item can be automatically replaced with the HoseSpline parametric object which can be easily animated. Multiple object parameters can be now copied from object to object quickly. The behavior of parametric objects has been improved when animating or deleting items to which they are linked.

Integration of RapidAuthor with Teamcenter Active Workspace now offers authors the following abilities:

• Editing and publishing S1000D and SCORM compliant documents.
• Editing and publishing DITA map documents.
• Authoring augmented reality content from Active Workspace. Publishing created
• content to REFLEKT ONE repository.

A new RapidAuthor Client for Teamcenter ensures convenient collaborative work between RapidAuthor and Teamcenter in the Active Workspace environment.

Integration of RapidAuthor with Teamcenter Service Planner has been expanded as well. The authors can create service instructions using Service Requirement objects. This includes:

• Automatic generation of XML texts, 2D and 3D illustrations, and animations.
• Applying engineering and service changes to the interactive service document.

The generation of 2D images has been improved: raster images can be created with transparent background or with the current background of the 3D window; the original size of raster and vector images is preserved when they are updated.

2D image editing introduces a lot of time-saving features:

• Object is highlighted when the mouse pointer hovers over it which speeds up the selection process.
• The use of extra color characteristics helps the user to easily distinguish different object types e.g. thick and thin lines.
• The ability to hide or lock individual objects allows the user to temporarily exclude interfering objects from the editing process.

Starting from RapidAuthor 14.0 the publishing option “use browser plugins” will not be available any longer, the user will be able to create plugin-free publications only. Plugin-free publications can be viewed online with Cortona3D Solo that is supported by most combinations of modern platforms and browsers. A browser-independent RapidAuthor Viewer for offline viewing of plugin-free publications on the Windows platform is also available starting from the previous release.

Check recommendations regarding switching to plugin-free publications.

Want to learn more about the RapidAuthor tool?  Register today for the What’s new in RapidAuthor 14.0 for Teamcenter presenting the new technical publications authoring and illustrating capabilities. The webinar will take place on 8^th September 2021, at 3 p.m. CEST.

You can also download a complete list of the new features in RapidAuthor 14.0.

Interested in learning more? Check out previous content and document management articles

About the Author: This post was written by Marina Nemchenko. She is head of Marketing and Sales at Cortona3D and has spent more than 10 years focused on the delivery of advanced technical publications solutions across a variety of industries. Cortona3D provides services and solutions for technical publication authoring and interactive viewing and has been successfully partnering with Siemens since 2008. The RapidAuthor products are tightly integrated with Siemens’ Teamcenter® portfolio to produce highly effective, interactive 2D, 3D, and animated technical publications from engineering data.