Guidebooks

A Guidebook collects everything your organization knows about one physical thing: a drawing, an assembly, a piece of equipment. Create one guidebook per object, then attach the procedures that apply to it, the technical documentation for it, and its CAD or digital-twin model. Guidebooks are deliberately thin: identity plus pointers, never content. A guidebook has no instructions of its own beyond a plain-text description; instructions live on procedures, and a shared procedure (lockout/tagout, torque verification, ESD handling) can appear in many guidebooks without being copied. It helps to think of guidebooks and skills as the two rollups of the same procedures: a skill answers “what is this person qualified to do”, a guidebook answers “what can be done to or with this thing”. Every guidebook gets a short ID (GBK-3) used in lists, breadcrumbs, and URLs.

​

Creating a guidebook

Go to Guidebooks and click New guidebook. Name it for the thing it answers for. The dialog also asks for:

• Linked object (optional): the 3D model of the thing, from your objects library. Picking one auto-fills the title from the object’s name. Each object can belong to only one guidebook, and a guidebook holds one object at a time.
• Drawing number, Revision, Customer item ID: your organization’s internal identifiers from the drawing title block. Scans and QR codes resolve against these later, and they keep regenerated 3D objects matched to the right drawing revision.

All the identity fields can be edited afterwards on the detail page, in the External identity card.

​

The guidebooks list

The list shows each guidebook with its linked object’s thumbnail, short ID, title, and procedure count, as Cards or a Table (the table adds drawing identifiers, reference counts, and creation dates). Search matches titles, short IDs, and all three drawing identifiers, so a pasted drawing number or item ID lands on the right guidebook.

​

The guidebook page

​

QR code

Every guidebook page opens with its QR code. A guidebook stands for a real piece of equipment, so the code is meant to end up on that equipment: print it, stick it on the enclosure, and a scan opens the guidebook. Right-click the code for Copy link, Copy image, Download PNG, and Download SVG. The code encodes the guidebook’s URL, not a bare ID, so renaming the guidebook does not strand a label already in the field. It stays dark-on-white in both themes because a printed label and the on-screen code have to agree.

​

Linked object

The object chip under the title shows the model’s thumbnail, its trackable status, and its size. Right-click it to Open object, Link a different object (a swap), or Unlink from guidebook. If the object hasn’t been processed for tracking yet, the chip reads Awaiting processing.

​

Procedures

The Procedures card lists the procedures linked to this guidebook. Each row shows the procedure’s short ID, title, and its published state: v2 · 14 steps for a published procedure, or Not published with a Draft only badge for one that has never been published. Use the + to link an existing procedure. The procedure stays where it is; a guidebook only points at it. Each row’s menu offers:

• Pin / Unpin: keep it at the top
• Hide / Show: suppress it from the guidebook without removing the link
• Remove from guidebook: drop the link (the procedure itself is untouched)

​

References

The References card holds the documents for the asset: the drawing, BOM, manual, or anything else (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, and other common formats). Drag files in or browse. Rows download on click; right-click for Open document, Extract procedure (PDFs), or Remove. 3D models don’t go here; they live in the linked-object chip.

​

Extracting a procedure from a document

Right-click a PDF in the References card and choose Extract procedure. The platform reads the document and drafts a procedure from it: its steps, safety callouts, outline nesting, and even the document’s own revision table (which appears on the procedure as read-only External history). Extraction takes a couple of minutes and survives a page refresh; when it finishes, a toast offers Open draft. The draft is automatically linked into the guidebook and nothing is published; it goes through the normal review and publish path.

​

Archive and delete

The ⋯ menu on the guidebook page offers:

• Archive: the guidebook disappears from the list but keeps its links, documents, and history. Its linked object is released, so a successor guidebook can claim it. There is no unarchive yet.
• Delete permanently: removes the guidebook and its uploaded documents. Procedures and 3D objects it points at are not deleted.