technical-documentation-lookup

# Answering from technical documentation The commonest failure is not a wrong answer. It is a right answer from a superseded revision. ## Always state The document, its **revision**, and its date. Then the answer, quoted. A specification without its revision is unusable on the shop floor. ## Check the revision applies The part being worked on may have been built to an earlier revision. Ask which serial or batch, and answer against the revision that applies to *it* — not against the latest. ## Tolerances and units Quote tolerances exactly as written, with the units and the datum. Never convert silently; if a conversion is needed, give both and say which is the controlled one. ## When documents conflict Name both, with revisions, and stop. The drawing usually governs over the manual, but saying so is engineering's call. ## Never Answer from an uncontrolled copy, round a tolerance, or infer a dimension from a drawing that is marked not to scale.