Solidworks Electrical 2d Harness Design
Jaunita Rousu
How often do you wait until you have a physical prototype in hand to start
your wire harness design? Do you see revisions to your mechanical assemblies
that force changes to your wire harnesses? Have you seen delays to product
launches due to waiting for your wire harnesses to be designed and built? If
you answered yes to any of those questions, you might want to start
integrating your wire harness design into your
SOLIDWORKS
assemblies. This can be done in several ways.
The routing tools that are part of SOLIDWORKS Premium are a great starting
point if you only need to integrate a few wire harnessing elements into your
SOLIDWORKS assemblies. It gives you the ability to design the harness on the
fly by dragging and dropping the connectors from your design library, then
define the routes with 3D sketches. The size of the harness adjusts as you add
or remove wires from the harness. Then, utilizing SOLIDWORKS Drawings, you can
detail out the flattened state of the harness. The big drawback with
SOLIDWORKS Routing is the need to build your library up with all the
connectors, wires and cables.
Another option for integrating your wire harnesses into your SOLIDWORKS
assemblies is to utilize the
SOLIDWORKS Electrical suite, consisting of
SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic Professional
and
SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D. The advantage of SOLIDWORKS Electrical is that it will automate 80 percent
of the work you will do using SOLIDWORKS Routing. This is done by taking the
design requirements from the Schematic. Then, Electrical 3D will import the
information needed directly from the Schematic, eliminating the need to build
up a cable and wire library for routing. The connectors that are used are
listed on the Electrical Manager next to the design tree, eliminating the need
to search the Design Library for parts. The one drawback with this solution is
the limit to the size and shape of the harness, as you increase the number of
wires and cables in the harness and the number of branches, the flattening of
the harness can become unpredictable.
Even with the strengths of both SOLIDWORKS Routing and SOLIDWORKS Electrical,
they both have shortcomings. This is why we added our last harness design
offering,
Enterprise Harness. Enterprise Harness from Landmark Technologies is a SOLIDWORKS partner
product that works with your SOLIDWORKS assemblies. Enterprise Harness allows
you to design your harness in a lightweight environment that is not restricted
by the strict rules of SOLIDWORKS Routing.
You can utilize a from-to list generated from a variety of tools, though we
recommend SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic Professional because of its powerful
backend database. Enterprise Harness is a much more robust tool for larger
harnesses, with the ability to handle a larger number of wires and branches
with ease. Enterprise Layout is the drawing and detailing tool with robust
Flattening ability helping eliminate excess work. Your completed 3D harness
shape can be exported back to your SOLIDWORKS assembly with a single push of a
button.
No matter your design requirements we have a solution to help speed up your
wire harness design integration into your mechanical assemblies. Visit our
website to explore
SOLIDWORKS Electrical
features, as well as other ECAD options we have offer. If you have any
questions,
contact us
at Hawk Ridge Systems. Thanks for reading!
A single line drawing is a great place to capture the broad strokes of your harness design, before worrying about the exact connection details. SOLIDWORKS Electrical has an enormous library of pre-made symbols that can be inserted as is, or used as a starting point for your specific component. Adding these components to your design is as easy as dragging and dropping the symbol on to your drawing sheet. The intuitive sketching tools make it easy to indicate electrical connections, but our drawing can include relevant non-electrical components, such as back shells, cable clips, or connector covers. With this flexibility you can quickly illustrate your full design intent in a graphical system overview.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical keeps track of the components inserted in your various drawings, making it easy for you to remember which symbols are in your connection overview, and which are needed in your detailed connection diagrams. The same streamlined tools allow you to intuitively specify exact pin to pin connections from any drawing. Specific components or conductors can quickly be added to harnesses via the right click menu from any drawing. This lets you define and edit your harness design on the fly, without worrying about flipping between the relevant drawings. To better keep track of all this connection information, SOLIDWORKS Electrical users can include dynamic connection tables that will automatically update as the design progresses. Predefined templates let you add whichever information is relevant, such as: origin and destination, wire gauge, and manufacturer part numbers.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical gives you the freedom to design your harness any way you want. This flexibility makes it the ideal tool to accommodate shifting design requirements and preferences of current and future projects. Contact us today, or check out more electrical articles on our blog to discover more ways that SOLIDWORKS Electrical will simplify your design process.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface that automates complex tasks, such as contact cross-referencing and terminal drawings. It accelerates product development by simultaneously minimizing the repetitive tasks associated with developing electrical schematics.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic Standard is a single-user schematic design tool that helps rapid development of embedded electrical systems for equipment and other products. Libraries of symbols and manufacturer part information provide common re-usable materials optimize design re-use.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic Professional is a suite of collaborative schematic design tools that drive rapid development of embedded electrical systems. Libraries of symbols, manufacturer part information, and 3D component models provide common re-usable materials optimize design re-use.
Extensive library of industry-standard schematic symbols (IEC, ANSI, JIS, GB) combined with a database of manufacturer parts to provide an easily customizable and adaptable parts database through easy-to-use import tools.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics Professional (with the purchase of SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D) links the schematic to 3D SOLIDWORKS assemblies. This facilitates verification of proper fit of components; planning for the paths and space needs of all wire, cable, and harness routes; and calculation of all wire lengths prior to any assembly.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics Professional is bidirectionally linked with the 3D design (with the purchase of SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D) which allows multiuser collaboration in real time between ECAD and MCAD engineers. Sharing a common database ensures consistency and facilitates the creation of a complete BOM.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical synchronizes all project design data in real time, bi-directionally in a multi-user collaborative environment between 2D schematics and the 3D model. This synchronization unifies key information (such as Bill of Materials (BOM) and design data) between design disciplines and users.
Electrical attributes now display both the bundle diameter and length for each segment within a harness, and the wire cross-section can be displayed. Wire Harness Drawings can display balloons that are organized with magnetic lines and stacked for a more compact and clean display. Connector tables will clearly display which connector it applies to, making it possible to move things around quickly without losing track of which table goes with which connector. Adding a column to one connector table prompts you to add that same column to all similar tables, making format changes simple and uniform. Splices now support multiple circuits, allowing for complex splice geometry to be represented with a single component and 3D model. The Routing Library can be connected to the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform to store all data and share it across users no matter where they are located easily and quickly.
Jeremy is an Elite Application Expert based out of the MLC CAD Systems Dallas Texas office since 2014. He is an Electrical Engineer with industry experience in industrial automation and laboratory equipment design. With a specialty in SOLIDWORKS Electrical and PCB, Jeremy provides training, technical support, and services for all the SOLIDWORKS Products.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical is a systems-level electrical design package that allows you to design electrical schematics quickly and accurately with customizable design tools. Electrical makes creating 2D schematics a quick and painless process. Additionally, create fully associated single line diagrams, terminal strip drawings, cabinet layouts, and more.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical is the only schematic design package that can be linked to the 3D SOLIDWORKS mechanical environment. This capability means you can automatically route and get the lengths of your wires, cables, and harnesses.
When considering adopting SOLIDWORKS Electrical, a frequently asked question we encounter from mechanical, electrical and I.T. professionals is, How does SOLIDWORKS Electrical work with our existing infrastructure and can we leverage our existing data? In this webinar, we will demonstrate how we easily bring in existing data and quickly generate the required deliverables by covering a few scenarios where SOLIDWORKS Electrical interacts with other commonly used products and tools in a complementary fashion.
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