Ulrich Alber GmbH + Co. KG occupies a leading position in its market segment: medical and rehabilitation technology. The company, with headquarters in Albstadt, Germany, specializes in the development and manufacturing of innovative technology for wheelchair drivers and people restricted in their mobility.

The company has grown steadily since its formation in 1986, and now, having 20 subsidiaries and agencies abroad, plays an important role on the international market.

Especially in the field of medical technology, safety is an important issue. For this reason, Alber applies special diligence to the creation of its technical documentation. Alber's training material, which includes repair and assembly instructions for the staff of the healthcare businesses and the agencies abroad, must be given special attention in its development. These instructions explain where and how single defective parts on the products can be replaced.

Rolf Bitzer, a representative from the Technical Documentation Department at Alber, discusses his commitment to safe and reliable repair practices: "In this context we have to mention that only employees of the healthcare business and our foreign agencies (who have undergone special training through us) are allowed to repair our products. Security-relevant parts are solely exchanged by us at our headquarters - after all the health of the wheelchair drivers depends on the correct functioning of the product."

Accordingly, technical documentation plays a significant role at Alber and is a legal requirement for the business. However, the documentation of technical products can be a tricky task for a company, especially depending on the prerequisites and conditions guiding such a project. At Alber, there is one decisive aspect: the instructions have to be absolutely precise - and precise in anywhere between nine and fifteen different languages! For this reason, technical illustrations are an essential element within the manuals of this company.

Technical documentation at Alber demands a high effort, especially when considering that Alber processes a great deal of components from supplier companies who all deliver different data. Especially in earlier years, the assortment of independent part providers  resulted in a major challenge for the production of manuals that had to be met in a manner that was both time and cost efficient. This goal of effective technical documentation was accomplished through the use of IsoDraw and IsoDraw CADprocess by ITEDO Software.

While the design engineers at Alber are using ProEngineer, many of the external developers are using other systems that are not compatible with ProE. Especially in former years, this meant an increased effort for the creation of technical illustrations. The prototype of any newly developed device had to be measured and then illustrated from scratch. Since there is rarely a standstill in the development phase, changes and revisions of the design and the operational parts often occur.

"In principle, I draw every single part separately, make a copy of it and then put the single parts together. This method allows me to kill two birds with one stone," explains Rolf Bitzer. "Changes (i.e. the exchange of single parts) can be executed relatively quick. The separate illustrations of partially assembled parts can now also be used for training, maintenance and repair instructions and the illustrations of single parts can be used for our product manual (as spare parts). Apart from that, the accessory components are also relevant for the creation of our product brochures."

Even so, the time and effort behind creating illustrations from scratch must not be underestimated, especially when considering that the whole documentation must be finished when the product is ready for launch.

Bitzer elucidates, "In my opinion, this is the greatest benefit of IsoDraw: the fast creation of illustrations to scale with dimensions taken from the product. With a software directed less to the needs of Technical Illustration, we could never meet with the deadline constraints."

Nowadays most external developers are working with systems that provide interfaces to ProEngineer, so that the majority of appliances at Alber are available fully assembled in ProE. This reduces the workload tremendously because with IsoDraw CADprocess the 3D data can be converted automatically to technical illustrations.

Yet, it still happens once in a while that for some components there is no 3D data available. Therefore, illustrating them from scratch cannot be avoided. For example, oftentimes requests come in for repair instructions on older products. The 2D workshop drawings that were once created are not suitable for assembly instructions. Therefore, the needed parts must - as described above - be measured and drawn with IsoDraw. From these illustrations, the instructions can be created.

To summarize, the illustration process at Ulrich Alber GmbH + Co. KG is such that:

• The parts available in ProEngineer are imported and converted with IsoDraw CADprocess.
• Missing parts are created from scratch with IsoDraw and then combined with the data taken from ProE.
• The various steps of the assembly are depicted, and hands and tool are added, for which IsoDraw offers a voluminous library.
• In conclusion, all required work steps are described by illustrations. Thus, text and translation costs for up to 15 languages can be saved.

"Before we implemented IsoDraw in our company, we had to hire an external drawing office. Even for minor changes, we had to send the respective product to the service provider to have it measured and drawn there.

Through the acquisition of IsoDraw we are now able to do all the work internally, which saves us a lot of logistic effort - and time. Apart from that, the orientation with the software was extremely easy - due especially to the practice-oriented training we had. After only a few hours we were able to work independently with the program.

Thus, we must say that the acquisition costs of IsoDraw amortized within a very short time", Rolf Bitzer concludes.

Graphics: © 2003 Ulrich Alber GmbH + Co. KG