Reference Documents (Storage)

How do you store and reference all of the documents you have related to automation? I'm talking pdf manuals, white papers, books, catalogs....

I have a collection on my bookshelf, and a collection of electronic copies on my laptop. Both methods can be cumbersome as a 300 page user manual sucks to luge around, and reading that 300 page user manual from a laptop screen isn't pleasurable either. Lately I've been thinking about getting an iPad or Kindle so I can put all of the reference documents into one easy to use and portable location.

Anyone else thinking about going this route? Or have you?

I haven't done what you are asking about (sounds like a neat idea btw), but between the two, IMHO, the Kindle is much nicer to read from. The Kindle is excellent on battery life, and the electronic paper display is awesome.

For PDFs, I think you would need the DX version, which doesn't have a card reader. Getting the documents onto it would be a bit more cumbersome then with an iPad, but not all that bad.

we are required to have manuals stored for every machine on the plant. Its pretty big.

we also have folders on our laptops for each machine based
on building & line. we then divide folders up into specifications, drawings-electrical & mechnical, plc, hmi, manuals, setup.
We are about to place dvd's on each machine with the same info.
its hard at first. but its worth it.

regards,
james

I have everything I use as a PDF in my "Technical Documents" folder on my laptop. I find it handy to use the features of Adobe Acrobat Standard to search for what I am looking for, and most of the newer manuals use the bookmark feature which makes it even easier.

demmons said:

I have everything I use as a PDF in my "Technical Documents" folder on my laptop. I find it handy to use the features of Adobe Acrobat Standard to search for what I am looking for, and most of the newer manuals use the bookmark feature which makes it even easier.

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I do the same thing, and when I know what I'm looking for this is my preferred method.

The spirit of this disussion is for someone like myself who is looking to continually self-educate. Studying books/manuals so I have the understanding of why/how the system works is my motivation. I'm thinking when I'm on the plane traveling to a site, or when I'm sitting on the couch at home this would be the perfect opportunity to educate, but having to power up a laptop and read 30+ pages at a time from my laptop is demotivating.

I was also looking at the Kindle DX as mentioned, but for the price it's hard to ignore the extra goodies the iPad would provide.

Paully's5.0 said:

I was also looking at the Kindle DX as mentioned, but for the price it's hard to ignore the extra goodies the iPad would provide.

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Before investing in either, see if you can borrow one of each for a day or two. Download some novel you might be interested in, and read it on both, under varying conditions.

If only for occasional, short term browsing, either is probably fine.

I have everything in PDF. Email it to myself in Google's Gmail. Current free storage is 7444 meg. That gives me worldwide access to all manuals, from any Internet site.

I sue windows skydrive 25 GB and it is free http://skydrive.live.com/

With ADrive you get 50Gb free http://www.adrive.com/

I use both and both work well.

Gladinet http://www.gladinet.com/ is a tool that i use a lot with skydrive for remote document access.

I keep all my PDFs organized in a folder on my desktop computer at the office, which is always on. This folder is mapped to my Windows "Live Mesh" account. Live Mesh is a free (for now) service. All the information in that folder is synchronized to the cloud. I then have that folder shard on my laptop. I can add and delete files from either my desktop or my laptop, and both devices get synced whenever my laptop is online, so everything says current.

I like this much better than the old 'offline files', since the actual file is stored in all locations. I also have my home computer linked to Live Mesh, because we all know that you're never REALLY out of the office. Another benefit of Live Mesh is that it also functions as a 'remote desktop' to/from any of the linked computers. Now there's never the "Oops, that's on my other computer" excuse. If I'm at a location that doesn't have wireless, I can tether my cell phone to my laptop and get online.

Besides this "Information" folder, I also have my customer folders shared on Live Mesh. Now everything is automatically synched, with the added benefit of having multiple backups of everything. One copy at the office, one on my laptop, one at home, and one in the cloud. All without having to remember to backup. I also use Carbonite on my office computer for additional backup.



-Eric

I use a Windows smart phone, it has software to read PDF files and supports up 32g microsd cards. I keep all my files on it and can read them on the phone if necessary.

The phone can link to a pc and the card accessed like a hard drive.

The phone also has the ability to get on the internet through both wifi and cellular connections if there is a document I don't have on the phone.

Even use it as a modem for my laptop when wifi isn't available