Creating a document based on another

If you want to design a document, then use that document in many places, or for many users, then eaDocX Auto-templates are the answer.
With Auto Templates you can:

• Do all your document design once, adding multiple sections and customizing formatting
• Save the resulting document as just another eaDocX Word document (.docx) file
• When you or your users want to re-use this document they can:
  • Select the Package they want to print
  • Select the Auto-template (.docx) document you created
  • Generate the document.
  • That’s it.

Names and Standards

This idea relies on you having a consistent naming standard for your packages across the different places where the document will be re-used, and fairly consistent content.

If you create the template document based on packages called ‘Requirements’, ‘Design’ and ‘Issues’, then when that auto-template document is used elsewhere – usually by a different project – eaDocX will look for packages called ‘Requirements’, ‘Design’ and ‘Issues’ in the new package. And it will just replace the old ‘Requirements’ content with the ‘Requirements’ package from the new project.

The template document will also have the formatting need for all the documents which use it. So when designing your template document you should have Profiles for all the different kinds of element which you expect to find in all the projects which will be using it. This means that if a project puts some unexpected content into their ‘requirements’ package, and there’s no profile for those elements, then they just won’t print. This may be what you want, but maybe not what the author of the document wants. Use Model Expert to help you to find out what content is where.

Creating your template document

An eaDocX Auto-template document can be just another eaDocX Document, or you can add a few extras to it to make it more useful, but these are optional.

What they should contain is all the formatting and design decisions which you need to make your document accurate and readable – exactly what you would do for any document.