Design or Organization advice sought

[HiyaKath]

Hi,

I'm sure there's a way of doing this, but I've been thinking about how for so long that it's becoming unduly complicated in my head.

I have a table of specs with around 50 items. These are used in multiple documents, a sub-set in each with some overlap. A small number are model specific; others are product specific; some are the same across products. I have several products in the same Flare project.

I thought about putting them into variables, but I would need to create a new set for every new model, as I don't want a new one to blow out all my old ones. And if I have to have a new set each model, then I'd have to change the link to the variable which seems like just as much work as putting them in manually.

I thought about putting them into snippets, I can't get my head around how to accomplish what I need using snippets.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Done anything similar?

I appreciate all thoughts.

Thanks,
Kath

[DocuWil]

I think it is better to use conditions.
Also to rows of a table you can apply one or more conditions.
In the output of the different documents you can exclude the conditions for the rows you don't want to have in a specific document.

[nickatwork]

Conditions will work, but if the table starts to get bigger and bigger it may become daunting to manage.
Snippets would work, though, I'm guessing you would have a lot of snippets with very small amounts of information in each. This wouldnt be so much of a problem, but if you choose this option then think of a set naming practice to use to make it easier to manage them.

Personally, I'd go with snippets, it means you can change the information for them if you need to at any point.
Just create your table (are you using table style sheets?) and drop each snippet of information into the relevant cell. Also, you wouldnt have to repeat this process over and over if the table is almost the same, you can just copy a 'master' table that uses the snippets you require, and paste it into a topic, the snippet references will be remembered, from there you could just remove the ones that dont apply, or add additional ones as you need.

Nick.

[ajturnersurrey]

I manage a set of datasheets which sound similar to your set up. I use snippets for some (but not all) of the repetitive bits of information. As was said before, your naming convention for these becomes important.

So, for instance, I have snippets called

dimensions_product_range_X that just contains the text "80 x 45 x 30 mm" which I use in the 'Dimensions:' field on every datasheet in product range X
dimensions_product_range_Y that just contains the text "120 x 30 x 30 mm" which I use in the 'Dimensions:' field on every datasheet in product range Y
weight_produc_range_X that just contains "1.2kg" which I use in the 'Weight:' field on every datasheet in product range X

I chose this way because I also have a US range of datasheets and it this makes it nice and easy for me to convert dimensions snippets from mm to inches or kg to lb in one place.

If a fact needs reusing in a manual or other document I make that a snippet too...even if it isn't common to other datasheets, so that I can link the data across to another project without taking everything.

I use conditions in my manuals, but I think my brain would have exploded if I'd tried to do that with datasheets!

[HiyaKath]

Thanks for the comments.

I decided to try a combination of variables and snippets which so far seems to be panning out. I guess time will tell as I try to expand it through all the products.

However, I've just run into another snag - perhaps not appropriate for this forum or thread, but.... When I insert my snippet into my file, it disappears from view. If I open the file in the text editor, the code says the snippet is there. If I build the target, the snippet is in the output. But it has vanished from the WYSIWYG view of the htm file. Also, anything I add after the snippet is also not showing up in the main view.

Is this some higher power telling me I've chosen the wrong approach?

Thanks,
Kath

[LTinker68]

There are attributes/effects you can show/hide from a drop-down menu in the XML Editor toolbar. I can't remember if one of them turns off viewing snippets. Check to make sure you haven't set the snippet to be conditioned out of the primary target, as the primary target is what's used to build the WYSIWYG view. You might also want to reset the window layout -- that might set things back to normal.