Authoring work instructions overview

You can write new work instructions, or edit existing work instructions in the Textual Work Instructions view if the access control list permits. Work instructions are associated with operations or processes in a process structure.

The Textual Work Instructions view opens in view mode (read-only). When entering edit mode, Teamcenter checks out the operation or process and enables editing. When exiting edit mode, Teamcenter checks in the operation or process and filters out editing. If you want to edit the work instructions on multiple operations, you can check them out manually before you begin. This decreases the time it takes to edit each individual work instruction.

If this is the first editing session for the current work instructions document, Teamcenter loads the work instructions template, as defined in the MEWiWorkInstructionTemplate preference.

You can double-click the work instructions preview datasets in the Teamcenter Attachments view to open them in their associated applications. For example, if the preview file is stored in PDF format, it opens in a PDF reader.

The preview file is in one of the following formats: PDF, MHT, DOCX, or RTF, as configured in the MEWiPreviewFormat preference.

All editing changes take effect only after you perform a Save operation. For example, if you search for a text snippet in the Structure Search view, your search only returns results for already saved text snippets.

When adding standard text elements (from a standard text library) to work instructions documents (associated with operations or processes in a process structure), ensure that both the library structure and the process structure have the same configuration rule. If the configuration rule of the library structure and the process structure are different, you may be adding data with the incorrect revision. In this case, Teamcenter issues a message to inform you what has happened.

The following figure displays a process structure and a standard text library structure. The two views on the right are the Textual Work Instructions view displaying the work instructions document of an operation, and beneath it the Standard Text view displaying a preview of a standard text element.