Hello everyone,

Our company is looking to create manufacturing and assembly procedures based on our Solidworks assemblies and I would appreciate any recommendations that you could provide. So far we have come up with a few options- First, we could cut/paste images and diagrams from Solidworks to create Manufacturing and Assembly Procedures (MAPS) using a third party software such as MS Word. While this may be easiest from a usibility perspective I have a few concerns- mainly the potential for errors in revision control between Solidworks and the third party software. Also, I'd like to have the ability to "auto-update" the MAPS when the assembly has changed.

Another option is to create or attach the MAPS in the body of the Soidworks drawings. This would help from the revision control perspective but is likely more combersome when writing the procedures/instructions.

I have also come across the Solidworks Composer software which looks like it may have merit although I'm not quite sure it has the capability to do everything we need it to. I need to look into it a bit further. Are there any other options out there?

We are under design control so whichever approach we choose will likely have to interface with a PDM software.

Any information you could provide on how you or your company write and maintain instructions and procedures within a design control environment would be greatly appreciated.