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Technical manuals

Technical manuals for complex products

Your product is complex, and your customers expect high quality supporting documentation. 3di has the expertise to deliver useful, accurate and clear technical manuals and user guides that reflect well on your product, your brand, and meet your customers’ expectations.

3di has designed and written manuals for a wide range of industries and technologies. We combine our in-house expertise with technical writers that have industry knowledge specific to your area – a combination that has proven to be successful again and again. 3di knows how to produce exactly the information you and your customers will need, whatever you call your technical manuals. For example: instruction manual, operator instructions, standard operating procedures (SOP), or operations and maintenance manual (O&M).

We’d be happy to share some technical manual examples – these can help you decide what would work well for you. We will recommend and agree with you on what should be written, the process and tools to use, and the time and budget to get the work done. You and your team can concentrate on your core activities while we concentrate on ours.

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Two Technical Writers Talking About Technical Documentation

What do you call your technical manuals?

  • Installation manuals
  • Start-up guides
  • Instruction handbooks
  • Software guides
  • Quick-start guides
  • Service guides
  • Operating manuals
  • Configuration guides
  • Commissioning manuals
  • Decommissioning manuals
  • Troubleshooting guides
  • System maintenance manuals
  • Operating instructions
  • Operating procedures
  • Standard operating procedures

Some of the considerations for technical manuals

When 3di helps create technical manuals for complex equipment, some of our considerations are:

  • What are the activities that your customers will need help with?: Understanding applications, provisioning, installation, configuration, operation, maintenance, troubleshooting?
  • What’s the best way of supporting each of these activities?: One big manual, several PDFs, online-only, on-product labelling, within the control system interface, training manuals, e-learning?
  • What’s your regulatory context?: Reducing risks for the operator and equipment, meeting compliance obligations, meeting supply-chain documentation requirements, English only for non-native speakers?
  • When do you need to ship or publish each type of document?: Information that supports the sales process, export licencing, factory acceptance testing, market accreditation, out-of-the-box, post-sales support?
  • What can we re-use, and what will we need to create?: CAD drawings, product specifications, use-case scenarios, testing protocols, related competitor manuals, training course materials?

Our process for creating technical manuals

Our experience across multiple industries has helped us hone the technical authoring process. We make it as simple as possible for you – no matter how complex your product or how tight your deadline is. Here’s an overview of our process:

Initial request

We understand what you want to achieve, agree on a commercial plan, and assign suitably skilled 3di authors.

Scoping

We assess your product and what you need to communicate. We create a detailed plan for you to review.

Authoring

We begin authoring the content and building the manuals. You provide some input and check you are happy with early prototypes.

Delivery

We complete the manuals and fine-tune the final formats for publishing. You confirm you are happy and your manuals are ready to use.

Find out more about our technical manual writing services

If you want to find out more about our award-winning technical authoring team, our process, or our previous work for some of the world’s most well-known companies, you can visit our blog post or case studies pages for more information. Alternatively, if you want to discuss how we can help create your technical manuals, contact us using the link below.

Case studies

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