Wiring harness design in CATIA V5 - 3D modeling Week 5 & 6 Challenge
Aim:
- Route two electrical harnesses per the given layout and interconnect them as a single harness assembly
- check for bundle continuity, and bundle warnings, and then provide annotations for the final harness assembly.
Objective:
- The objective of this project is to first route the two Harness A and Harness B as per the given harness layout.
Figure 1: Shows the layout of two Harness A and Harness B
The electrical connectors are represented by numbers in the above figure. There are 8 different types of connectors at 10 different locations.
2. Bundle continuity has to be checked for the two created harnesses.
3. After the two Harnesses are created, the next objective is to have them interconnected electrically.
4. Check for bundle warnings in Harness A and Harness B.
5. Add annotations to all the connectors in Harness A and Harness B.
Content:
The following steps are to be done to complete this project.
Step-1:
Define all the electrical connectors geometrically and electrically so that they can be used in the wiring harness.
HARNESS A
After all the connectors are defined, the workbench was switched to Electrical Harness Assembly where Geometrical Bundle was activated. All the connectors were routed using the Multi-Branchable Document command.
HARNESS B
After all the connectors are defined, the workbench was switched to Electrical Harness Assembly where Geometrical Bundle was activated. All the connectors were routed using the Multi-Branchable Document command.
HARNESS ASSEMBLY
CONNECTIVITY CHECK
- Now in this step, we have to check bundle continuity in both Harness A and Harness B.
- So for that, go in Edit>Search>Workbench-Electrical>Type-Bundle segment>Attribute-fully connected.
- We will get one window, in that selecting True option will show all the connected bundle segments while selecting False option will show all the non-connected bundle segments.
- Now, we will check for True condition and search for result.
- All the bundle segments are showing connected. So there is bundle continuity in both Harness A & Harness B as shown in below images.
ANNOTATIONS
- In this step, we have to add annotations for all the connectors in mechanical assembly design workbench.
- Annotations are used for giving connector name, functions etc.
- For this, we have to select plane where annotation will be placed. In below image, we have selected front plane.
- We should make sure that the geometrical bundle is active before selecting the annotation plane.
- We can change a font, font color and font size by going into the properties as shown in below image.
- So after giving annotations to all connectors, the whole assembly will look as below.
Converted as a part body and save as IGS Format
- Now, in this step we have to convert final harness assembly file into IGS format. So for that we need to follow below steps.
- Mechanical Assembly Design workbench>Tools>Generate CAT Part from product.
- Once the CAT part is created, the whole product file is converted into a single part.
- Now, whole file is converted into the IGS format and we can see all the harness assembly is looking in grey color.
- If we need to change color as before in green, we can go back and give green color to each bundle segment.
- To save CAT part file as IGS file, we have to use 'Save as' option as shown in below image.
So in this way, we have done with the harness routing and interconnection of both the harness A&B according to given layout. Both the harnesses are checked and corrected for bundle continuity, bundle warnings, annotations are added for all the connectors and at the end whole CAT part file is converted into the IGS format.