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Subject:Two Weeks: A Quick How To From:"George Mena" <George -dot- Mena -at- esstech -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 5 May 2004 15:02:17 -0700
Dear Dan Gallager,
Have read about your situation. Some thoughts:
* The first area of the manual to focus on is testing and troubleshooting. Start there first, as it'll also help you with understanding the theory of operation, which is the other part of the manual you'll have to work up concurrently with testing and troubleshooting.
* Your manual will break down into three parts: Theory of Operation, Testing and Troubleshooting, and Illustrated Parts Breakdown, for replacement parts.
* The Illustrated Parts Breakdown will more or less take care of itself. The first things you need are copies of all the drawings in the drawing tree re schematics, along with their respective Bills of Materials (BOMs). YOU NEED THESE RIGHT NOW. Get them. You need to understand the primary assemblies and subassemblies inside the box, which is why you need the drawings. There's at least one top-level drawing that shows where all of the other drawings and assemblies fit in. Get this first, as this will be the basis for your parts manual. The drawings will also show you where the test points on different circuit boards are, so you can understand more in the testing and troubleshooting area.
* For every engineer, there is also a bench test technician who knows his boards better than the engineers. Get some very real hands-on time on the circuit boards and learn how to test the circuit boards the way the techs do, so you can write up the test procedures while you learn. Again, this will be part of the testing and troubleshooting section of the manual.
* Expect to put in some serious overtime, starting right now. Depending what you've done in the form of preliminary workup so far, your best friend -- and worst enemy -- is time, or lack thereof. The sooner you can get the drawings and the BOMs, preferably in electronic format, the better. Also, if there are any existing manuals of previous devices like this one, get a copy of said manual and start reading it. You have to be productive now. If there is an electronic version of a previous manual you can use as a straw man from which you can build your manual, so much the better.
* If your drawings were done in OrCAD or AutoCAD and all you have is Visio, get soft copies of the drawings in *.DXF format. Visio accepts *.DXF format drawings and will convert them into the Visio format for you, precluding your need to have either OrCAD or AutoCAD. If you have Illustrator instead of Visio, even better. Again, though, *.DXF format drawings are critical. Insist on them.
* Finally, never work past midnight unless you have no other choice. After midnight, everyone's toast.
Good luck!
George
George Mena
Sr. Technical Writer
ESS Technology, Inc.
48401 Fremont Blvd.
Fremont, CA USA 94538
510-492-1763
e-mail: George -dot- Mena -at- esstech -dot- com
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