I use the tool called Meazure to take screen shots of all key and essential settings, file lists, and dialog boxes and then paste the result into a Word document. Following that the Word document is printed to PDF and saved away with the project archive. Any other essential product information is also saved as PDF as well including diagrams I may have prepared in AutoCad or Visio, spreadsheets from Excel or Helper Tools built in VB6 or C.

Some IDEs will save a bunch of their info in some type of text or XML file. If so I will make a note of this in the Word document and may include important extracts of those files as well.

The Word file, due to ability to save items from pictures, objects and textual also facilitates documenting additional items such as:

- target product photos
- target product screen shots
- product schematics or schematic snippetts
- source code snippetts such as error message summaries
- product run time data outputs such as log output or calibration data dump
- product connector pinnings
- test cable definitions
- debug pod connections, usage diagrams or photos
- product code release notes and version tracking summary
- and maybe even some of the product block diagrams is applicable.

I save the Word DOC file primarily for use as a path to the next version of the document.

Meazure can be had for free from: http://www.cthing.com/Meazure.asp

Michael Karas