© National Instruments Corporation 1-1 DocumentIt User Guide
1
Introduction
With SystemBuild and DocumentIt menu options, you can generate
high-quality design documentation automatically from SystemBuild block
diagrams. This guide provides the information you need to start using
DocumentIt, as well as the more advanced details necessary to customize
the generated design documentation.

Manual Organization

• Chapter1 provides an overview of the National Instruments design
documentation generation concept, a description of the basic steps
required to produce documentation, and a brief example of
documentation generation from a SystemBuild model. This chapter,
along with Chapter2, Invoking DocumentIt, will give you everything
you need to know in order to generate documentati on using any of the
templates described in AppendixB, Generating Documents Using
FrameMaker, through AppendixE, Generating Documents Using
Microsoft Word.
If you want to create custom documentation, refer to the Related
Publications section of Chapter3, Customiz ing the Generated
Documentation.
• Chapter2, Invoking DocumentIt, tells how to generate documents
from SystemBuild, the Xmath Commands window, and from the
operating system command line.
• Chapter3, Customizin g the Generated Documentation, points you to
a detailed explanation of template files (*.tpl) for formatting a
document. NI supplies DocumentIt templates (*.tpl files) for each of
the examples given in Appendix B, Generating Documents Using
FrameMaker, through AppendixE, Generating Documents Using
Microsoft Word. You can copy the *.tpl files from any of these
examples and modify them using the information in this chapter.
• AppendixA, DocumentIt Options, provides a description of the
DocumentIt options, and explains how to use an autostar.opt file.