Chapter 2 – Product Documentation

Publisher Summary A profitable company has a product that is in demand. That product is embodied in the drawings and specifications. For Product Documentation one should keep as few formats active as possible. A well-thought-out drafting standard will help in this area. One should use ANSI Y 14.5, DOD STD 100 or the commercially available Drawing Requirements Manual (DRM) as a guideline for the standard, taking care to ensure that all the rules and guidelines given therein have been taken into account as well. In other words, one should not just invoke one of these standards, but should read, and modify it according to the parts of this text that he or she wishes to adopt, deleting those parts that are not applicable to the business. Also, change control sections should be deleted, as they are poor and even counterproductive. Design documents, regardless of size, including drawings, specs, lists, and other documents, should have a common format. They should all have a Body, Title Block, and Revision Block.