Why is Technical Illustration Needed?

In basic terms, technical illustration employs a balance of informative graphics, text, and embedded data or intelligence to compose pictorial views that visually communicate and clarify critical product information.

This effective blend of communicative data types enables the human eye to readily scan and interpret interrelated pictorial and textual information, for rapid comprehension and execution of work instructions.

Once studied, the work instructions can be rescanned and assimilated by the assembler while the work is being performed and verified.

Product Assembly and Disassembly

Parts assembly is a sequential process, but engineering drawings do not present information in a step-by-step format. In contrast, exploded view paraline or perspective illustrations, replete with callouts, BOM data, and sequential assembly operation notes, convey manufacturing assembly instructions that visually guide the worker through the assembly process—resulting in significant gains in quality and productivity for shop floor personnel.

In addition, when using static exploded and assembly view illustrations instead of virtual visualization data, there is no need to repeatedly replay disk and CPU-intensive animation or video clips to grasp, understand, and perform the task at hand.

The rationale of using exploded views to efficiently impart information applies not only to assembly instructions, but to other key product support documentation such as installation guides, operation guides, service orders, maintenance manuals, and parts catalogs—all of which rely on exact representation of parts and associated critical fit conditions, BOM data, callouts, and concise procedures ordered in proper sequence.

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Tasks Unique to Technical Illustration

In addition to the realistic nature of compact perspective line art illustrations, a number of key differentiators further separate TI software from CAD, DTP, and Visualization applications:

• Creation and matching of precise artwork in any conceivable technical drawing format, using either exact coordinates or cursor input techniques
• Flexible composition tools for quickly and accurately developing complex layouts from masked component data
• Flexible annotation tools and type foundry fonts for addressing diverse textual needs ranging from callouts and notes to flyer copy authored with sophisticated typographic controls
• Powerful hybrid editing tools for manipulating vector, raster, or both data types concurrently
• Embedding of metadata into host graphics for use in hyperlinked publishing applications that require intelligent graphics
• Illustrative rendering tools for imparting photo-realism to enhance visual clarity and improve communication quality
• Production-proven data exchange converters for import and export

Once composed, rendered, masked, and annotated, line art views created with TI software are readily exported through standard artwork exchange formats—such as CGM—to imaging devices, web applications, EDM archives, and a host of other downstream authoring, composition, and publishing systems.

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