An electronic spare-parts catalog contains parts lists and graphical illustrations, such as exploded drawings, linked together electronically. A catalog of this form can usually reduce the spare-parts documentation to a single CD or DVD. A change service can be provided either by means of CD-ROMs, or over the internet.
The form in which the spare-parts catalog exists before it is integrated into an electronic catalog is of no great importance. Parts-lists saved in ASCII format can be integrated, as can scanned graphical illustrations. Optimum integration of text and image, however, does call for a graphical format (such as CGM or SVG) that is capable of containing hot-spot information. This permits local figures, for instance, to be activated.
Bitmap or raster graphic images can be converted with the aid of the R&S Hotspot Toolbox. However, if the graphical representations must be of particularly high quality, pure vector graphic or bitmap elements are to be recommended, as they can be scaled without loss of quality.
