DOC Applications
Documents are an essential part of any project, if only to produce formal deliverables to the customer and obtain the necessary approvals at phase gates.
Cradle’s document generation tools will be in use throughout the project, but particularly towards the end of each project phase, as the results of that phase are reported, in different ways and in different formats for different recipients.
Cradle provides a choice of two document generation tools, each suited to a different need. The Document Printer can generate output for a variety of printers and software tools, including Word and FrameMaker. The Document Publisher is integrated with Microsoft Word, and is designed to exploit Word’s capabilities. For example, whilst with the Document Printer one assembles a complete document as a set of templates, the Document Publisher leverages your existing Word templates and embeds into them special tags (hidden text inside bookmarks) that are replaced by data from your Cradle database when the document is generated.
You can use these document generation tools to generate all of your project documents, ranging from URDs, SRDs, RTMs, System Design Specifications (SDSs), Sub-System Design Specifications (SSDSs), software requirements documents, System Engineering Management Plans (SEMPs), Test and Assessment Management Plans (TEAMPs) and so on, through to Interface Control Documents (ICDs) and Acceptance Specifications.
All of these project documents are, in effect, merely reports from the database, albeit complex ones. This means that using Cradle encourages the break from a document-centric view of the systems engineering process. Instead, it is the information in the database that is updated, under configuration management control, and new versions of the documents are generated from the formal baselines that result from the application of proper quality assurance and quality control procedures.
Of course, draft documentation can be generated at any time, and since all documents are generated from the single point of truth, your Cradle project database, all documents are guaranteed to be completely consistent.
When the document generator tools are used to produce documents that are formal project deliverables, that is, formal issues of key project documents, the built-in project document register will be updated automatically. This register can be used as a measure of project progress, as it contains the current issue state of all project deliverables.
| Features: |
Benefits: |
| Arbitrarily large and complex documents |
Generate the documents that your project needs |
| Document templates defined in Word |
No complex scripting languages to learn, use existing paragraph, character and page styles. |
| Automated section numbering |
Create arbitrarily complex document structures automatically based on information structure within the database |
| Arbitrary cross reference nesting |
Create tables which follow any number of levels of cross reference according to user-defined rules |
| Document self-referencing |
Structure later sections based on the contents of earlier sections, including where the structure of these earlier sections has been generated completely automatically. |
| Built-in support for PVM, RTM and similar matrices |
Easily construct major tables in specification documents by using built-in support for the most common traceability matrices |
| Documents and layouts defined graphically |
No complex scripting languages to learn |
| Layout nesting |
Rapidly create layouts by building them from simpler components, share components between documents |
| Field groups |
Easily generate lists and repeating layout elements, control intergroup spacing |
| Tabular layouts |
Define table headers and footers and easily control formatting of table rows |
| Combines diagrams with text |
Embed models in documents together with any and all other project data |
| Embed graphics such as figures and table |
Reflect the rich internal structure of Cradle database items in your generated documents |
| Report cross referenced information |
Arbitrarily complex nesting of data for maximum flexibility, selection controls for cross referenced information based on attribute values, link types, link directions and link attributes |
| Any number of lists and indexes in each document |
Easily generate compliancy matrices, indexes, lists of figures and tables, and tables of contents |
| Controllable information ownership selection |
Document approved project baselines, current work-in-progress of the latest information from either source |
| Supports word and document processors, and external project-specific style and paragraph catalogues |
Optionally use existing style sheets to format Cradle DOC output when merging with document sections produced elsewhere |
| Multiple output formats |
Output in PostScript or PCL direct to printers, or direct to word processors and document processors in formats such as RTF and MIF |
| Formal document register |
Maintain a list of the issue of specific versions of formal project deliverable documents, with the means to reprint any document version on demand |
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