How should I handle repeating parts in a technical description?

I'm about to write a technical description for an industrial process. The description will follow logical blocks, or blocks from the PFD of the process. This a sales document aimed at engineers. Because of the sales aspect, I need should emphasize all the elements that make us unique. Several parts will repeat throughout the plant, other parts I need to describe that can hardly be placed in one specific logical block - like interconnecting pipework or control.

My idea is to describe components when they first show up as a subchapter of the block they are in, and reference this subchapter when a component shows up in another block. Is there a better way to do this?

Edit to add: An alternative would be to have the component descriptions in every place the component shows up. Some would be repeated two or three times. This would pad the document. The pro would be that a reader who just looks up one part of the process does not need to jump around the whole text, but I would have to trust my readers to skip the parts they already read elsewhere. What to do?

posted almost 11 years ago

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mart‭

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