Assembly instructions template, free (Word and PDF)
A template for step-by-step assembly instructions, ready to fill in. Download it as a Word file to edit, or as a PDF to print and write on. It's free, with no sign-up.
The Word file also opens in Google Docs and LibreOffice. Both are A4.
What's in the template
- A cover: the product's name, model number, version and date, a space for a picture of the finished product, and your contact details.
- Before you start: safety notes, the time it takes, the tools needed, and tables of the parts and fixings, each with a reference, a picture space and a quantity.
- Six numbered steps, two to a page. Each has a picture space, the parts it uses, what to do, and a check that it's right. Copy a step to add more.
- When you've finished: a checklist, care notes and who to contact about missing or damaged parts.
Everything you need to replace is in [square brackets], in grey italics, so nothing gets missed. The example text shows the kind of thing that goes there.
How to fill it in
- Give parts letters (A, B, C) and fixings numbers (1, 2, 3), and use the same ones in every step.
- One action per step. If a step needs two pictures, it's two steps.
- Show only what the step adds, picked out from what's already built.
- Say what right looks like at the end of each step, so a mistake is found before the next one hides it.
- Hand it to someone who has never seen the product and watch them build it. Wherever they stop, the instructions need work.
There's more on order, views and testing in how to make assembly instructions from CAD and IKEA-style assembly instructions. If your product is machinery sold in the EU, read the EU Machinery Regulation guide: a template doesn't make a manual meet the law, and this one makes no such claim.
The pictures, from your CAD model
The picture spaces are the hard part. If you have the product as a STEP file, Lineplate makes them in your browser: exact line drawings and exploded views, free for up to 250 parts, exported as SVG, PDF or PNG to paste into the template. On Pro it numbers the parts with balloons, writes the parts list, works out the steps and lays out the whole manual for you. See a manual made that way.