Some of Mekon’s clients are actively involved in producing S1000D based Component Maintenance Publications for the Airbus A350 aircraft. To assist in this work Mekon has modified the Eclipse S1000D for FrameMaker application to allow it to be pre-configured to comply with the AirBus CDIM.
The CDIM, where it relates to authoring, can be divided into two general areas, and in the construction of the CMM into a very specific structure:
- Output formatting
- Business Rules
- Complete CMM Publication
Eclipse S1000D for FrameMaker V9 is easily switched into the Airbus A350 authoring mode by means of a user selected preference.
Output formatting
Airbus indicates in the CDIM how it wishes quite a number of structures to be formatted and the Eclipse S1000D for FrameMaker. The various supporting files are provided which format the text in the correct way. There are some areas where no specific instructions are provided and these are displayed in accordance with S1000D.
As part of the configuration is related to how certain attributes and other automatically generated text is created the Eclipse application is provided with separate configuration files to accommodate these.
Business Rules
As part of the configuration of Eclipse S1000D for FrameMaker to work with the Airbus A350 CDIM, Mekon has extended the operation of the application to utilise a Business Rules Exchange file (BREX) which we have created. Using this file the application provides limitations on what elements are or are not allowed in certain situations. By this means an author is prevented from inserting elements where they are not allowed by Airbus.
Complete CMM Publication Output
The S1000D Data Modules created using the Eclipse S1000D for FrameMaker application, configured to work in the A350 mode, has a very specific output structure. To accommodate this requirement Mekon has created a very special version of its Eclipse BookBuild application which is called Eclipse A350. The functionality of this application is much reduced from the standard BookBuild.
Population of the publication is by means of a Publication Module (PM) which complies with the A350 model. Using the A350 PM building a CMM is a straightforward and relatively easy task. All relevant Tables of Contents and other ‘management’ pages are automatically generated and included in the publication. The end of data modules, page blocks etc are all indicated in the required way.
All cross referencing within the publication is accommodated and is converted into Hypertext links.
Only one output is provided and that is a high quality PDF file. This file is generated and saved automatically and is used for printing the paper copy on demand.