Autodesk Inventor - Keeping Our Mechanized Armed Forces Operational

Assembling, operating, and maintaining critical pieces of machinery are a daily responsibility of maintenance mechanics in the military. Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs), in particular, are a perfect example of military land/water machinery that must be constantly maintained in to avoid potentially serious or fatal incidents. The military technical documents, used for assembly, operations, and maintenance of these multi-ton beasts, are typically static paper drawings. Normally kept in a three-ring binder, the documents are prone to get crumpled, dirty or even lost making life difficult on the mechanics. Needless to say, navigating away from clumsy, static, paper documents towards an electronic system of managing and accessing their technical documents is a welcome change. This was the subject of a recent article - “Managing Technical Documentation in the Military Made Easy with the Right Software”- by [acronym] Online contributor, Greg Cavanaugh. Greg spoke with Jay Mitchell, a mechanic with the United States Marine Corps (USMC). Jay outlined the challenges of managing complex technical documents and, although switching to a desktop format was helpful, drawbacks still remained. New technologies such as Autodesk Inventor Publisher allow mechanics and manufacturers to view installation guides, service documentation and assembly instructions automatically generated from existing Autodesk Inventor drawings. So when 3D design changes are made to an AAV design model using Autodesk Inventor, that information automatically updates existing Publisher technical documents, making life easier on Jay’s maintenance group.
Publisher is technical documentation software that works directly with engineering data to produce a wide variety of technical documents. Publisher accesses design data through the Autodesk Vault data management program, thereby ensuring that when engineering data is updated, the technical documents are updated as well. This creates continuity between the design data and the technical documentation. It also cuts down on the lag time that it takes to create tech docs after the design is finalized. With Publisher, the technical writers can produce documents throughout the design process that update and evolve as the design changes.
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