Product/Service

Continental DataGraphics Quill 21™ IETM Authoring System

Source: CDG, a Boeing Company
The Boeing Company developed Quill 21, an authoring system for Class IV/V Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETM). Quill 21 is an extremely scalable authoring system that has proven itself capable of handling more than 60 concurrent users authoring in the same IETM database.

The Boeing Company developed Quill 21, an authoring system for Class IV/V Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETM). Quill 21 is an extremely scalable authoring system that has proven itself capable of handling more than 60 concurrent users authoring in the same IETM database. Quill 21 is used on the F/A-18 A-D, E/F programs, C-130, Comanche Helicopter, Swiss Air Force F-18, Boeing Australia LTD, as well as on several pilot and R&D projects, both military and non-military.

System Overview
The Quill 21 system consists of three main components - an authoring system, a database and a presentation system. The authoring system is a C++ application that populates an object-oriented database. The Data Courier™ presentation system is a cross-platform application, which displays the data from a relational database. MIL-PRF-87269 compliant SGML is generated from Quill 21's object-oriented database and parsed into the relational database for use by the Data Courier presentation system.

Quill 21 IETM Authoring
Using Quill's comprehensive set of editing tools, a Quill author first creates and/or defines the low level components to be used in an IETM, including such things as steps, alerts, parts, consumables, and graphics. For example, the Step Editor and the Alert Editor shown to the right are used to create the steps and alerts which will later be used as components in maintenance tasks. It is important to note, that although Quill supports MIL-PRF-87269 compliant SGML, Quill authoring does not require the use of SGML - rather, the author simply fills in the appropriate areas on each form, or selects options from menu selections.

Once the low level components have been authored, the Quill Task Flow Editor is then used to author actual IETM maintenance tasks. The Task Flow Editor is a graphical tool that the IETM author uses to create flow charts that define the order of the steps for each task.

Authoring System Environment
The Quill 21 authoring environment features an N-tier client/server architecture that includes a Java Graphical User Interface (GUI) that runs on the client computers of individual IETM authors, a server based Quill application and an object-oriented database.

The Quill 21 client software runs on Windows based desktop computers. The server side software is cross-platform, supporting multiple Solaris and/or Microsoft Windows based configurations. The object database (ODBMS) system is the Versant Developer Suite database from Versant Technology.

Graphics/Multimedia
Quill 21 effectively manages multipicture CGM files. This allows authors to link graphics to any object, including tasks, steps, parts, descriptive information, other graphics, etc. Hotspots are added to the CGM files coming out of the engineering CAD systems. Authors turn on hotspots to fit the context in which the graphic is used. This promotes data reuse; one of the CGM files in the F/A-18 Super Hornet IETM database contains more than 4,000 links. Boeing is also part of the Tri-Service Interoperability study addressing the MIL-PRF-87269B specification and interoperability requirements of the U.S. Navy and the DoD Tri-Services.