Style for engineering environment - template, stylesheet...

[seasonedrookie]

Hello,

I'm new to MadCap and I'm wondering if there are downloadable stylesheets or templates geared toward different types of help docs. In particular, I need a good template for an engineering environment.

Best,

Ryan

[lacastle]

There are sample projects you can use to set up new projects (instead of starting blank) that have different master page layouts, page layouts, etc. Usually (i think), people tend to make templates in flare that match existing company documentation, stead of designing something specifically in flare. most companies have different standards for document design.

[seasonedrookie]

So the sample templates are all that are available?

I'm designing this from the ground-up. My company doesn't have any previously written material that they are happy with.

I was hoping that Flare users maybe designed templates and put them out for download. I'm having trouble getting started and I'm doubting my abilities to design this doc from scratch without forgetting something important.

[RamonS]

While there are always better ways to do specific documentation I recommend you start with what Flare has and begin work. Over time it will become obvious which type of formatting you direly need. Alternatively, you can study various engineering documents (which field of engineering do you mean?) and analyze the commonly used styles. I bet there will only be a few rather simple ones, such as italic and bold and maybe some underlining (which you should avoid to prevent confusion with hyperlinks).
Since you are new to Flare I would not focus too much on the most tricky part, which is the guts of CSS. In the other post someone pointed you to the W3CSchools web site, that is a good primer and something you can work through on a weekend.