Wiring harness design in CATIA V5 - 3D modeling Week 5 & 6 Challenge

Aim- To Route two electrical harness bundles as per the given layout and interconnect them as a single harness assembly and check for bundle continuity, bundle warnings, and give annotations to the final harness assembly.

Connectors
• Define all connectors as electrical component and define their Bundle connection point and Connector connection point.

Harness Layout

• Once done, an assembly file is created each for Harness A and Harness B.

All the connectors are positioned and aligned at their desired position, branch points are added at required locations and bundle segments are added accordingly by assuming the diameters as 10mm and 15mm.

Harness B Routing

Harness A Routing

Bundle Continuity

• Before inter-connecting Harness A and Harness B together, we have to check bundle continuity in both Harness A and Harness B.
• Go to Edit>Search>Workbench-Electrical>Type-Bundle segment>Attribute-fully connected.
• A pop-up window will open, in that selecting True option will show all the connected bundle segments while selecting False option will show all the non-connected bundle segments.

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.

Harness B

Harness A

Interconnection

• We must interconnect both Harness A & Harness B. For that, we must create new Assembly product file and both Harness A and B are added.
• We must go into Electrical Assembly Design to connect both the harnesses electrically. So, for that, select the option 'connect electrical devices' and both the harnesses will get connected electrically as below.
  
  

Bundle Warnings

• Geometrical bundle warnings are shown for bend radius, bundle diameter and vector position.

If there is any incorrect input regarding these factors then yellow coloured flash be appearing in the model tree structure next to the Branchable with problems.

Annotations

Adding annotations will enable in easy identification of component and is beneficial if any side notes must be added in the assembly view. Annotations are provided for all the connectors in mechanical assembly design workbench.

Annotations are used for giving connector name, functions etc.

• Before annotations can be added, annotation plane must be selected, where the reference text can appear
• We should make sure that the geometrical bundle is active before selecting the annotation plane.
  
  
  
  
  

Converting File to IGS format

The final harness assembly file can be converted into IGS format, from Product file.

• Mechanical Assembly Design workbench>Tools>Generate CATPart from product.
• Once the CAT part is created, the whole product file is converted into a single part.

By using the ‘Save As’ command, we can convert the CATPart file to IGS file.