Component Maintenance Publications

In the last 12 months there have been two specifications for Component Mainteance Publications derived from S1000D Data Modules.

• Airbus CDIM for the A350 Aircraft
• ATA Spec 1000BR_4.2 (aka Civil Aviation Busines Rules for S1000D Issue 4.2)

Airbus CDIM for A350 aircraft.

Last year Airbus brought out their specification for creating S1000D Component Mainteancne Publication (CMP) for the A350 aircraft. Their specification clearly was designed to handle how they wished S1000D to be used for their aircaft. The requirements reflected that need and dpecified folder structure, the location of the various files, the Page Layout, the combinations of Data Modules and the generation of divider pages between topics.

I found it verhy intersting seeing how they had produced the Business Rules and the migration into their BREX. They clearly indicate how Airbus want their documents to look and feel.

Clients of ours needed to produce the CMP documents in PDF form for Airbus and we were able to help them in this regard.

The number of choices that our clients had regarding layout, what was to be displayed, and the structure were much reduced which made the cratiion of an application very much easier. Compared with our standard building programme which has umpteen options regarding what is dispalyed and where it is located, and even the structure the A350 building programme is a considerable sawn down affair. As long as the client gets the files in the right place and has the attributes set to the right values building the publkication is very much a single button operation.

Incorporating the Brex into our Editing programme was interesting and testing was even moer interesting. Going througbh the Brex step by step to check is an omission was handled correctly was a real test on the knowledge of where the various elements were located in the schema.

ATA Spec 1000BR_4.2

We were wondering if ATA would come up with an all can do CMP specificatio and they have. The ATA Spec 1000BR_4.2. This is very much a more general set of Business Rules as one would have expected, i.e. A350 Specific against any Aircraft using S1000D Data Modules.

Having been through the Brex incorporation process onece it was interesting to see what differences there were. As expected there were a not that many. It was also interesting to see how the BREX had been written which only confirmed what we had already thought - more than one way of doing it!

We did notice that there were a few problems with the BREX, mainly in inconsistencies. One example was where the rule specifically stated that an element was not to be used but the explanation indicated that it should. Incorporating this Brex into our Editing programme took less time as a result of our prior experience. Testing was just as interesting - find out where an element should have been if it was not excluded.

Just for fun and learning opening one of the Bike Pack data modoules with the ATA Business rules switched in to see how long it took to get it compliant gave an insight into what was going to be invovled for a company creating standard S1000D DMs and converting them to ATA. To be honest it was not that painful and didn't take that long - but that was only one DM and not hundreds.

BREX Checker

What has come out of this is the need for a Brex checker which would work natively with S1000D Brex data modules. I was amazed at the speed at which this worked, even on a folder full of files. Of course the interpreting the report is an acquired skill and it remains to be seen whether the average auhor will be happy to do this or is a nominated person going to be given the job.

A report from one of our clients indicates that the delivered data modules are not always looked at by the same person at athe other end. This has resulted in Data Modules tavelling backwards and forwards with different comments each time. We had no way of knowing what was being used for checking.

Oveall the use of S1000D for comercial aircraft is reaching an interesting stage but where a company is providing S1000D Data Modules for both military and commercial aircraft there could be conflicts especially where different companies are involved - after all an aircraft power supply (just an example and not real life to us) is likely to be used on many aircraft.