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

Aim:

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

Objective:

• The electrical connectors are represented by numbers in the above figure. There are 8 different types of connectors at 10 different locations.
• Bundle continuity has to be checked for the two created harness.
• After the two Harnesses are created, the next objective is to have them interconnected electrically.
• Check for bundle warnings in Harness A and Harness B.
• Add annotations to all the connectors in Harness A and Harness B.
• The final objective of this project is to convert the final harness file into IGS file format.

Procedures:

Define all the electrical connectors geometrically and electrically so that they can be used in the wiring harness.

First, create Gemetrical parameters such as points and Axis to the Electrical connectors. Then define all the component as Connectors and deifnesd connector connection point and bundle connection point for each connectors.

 

 Create Harness A and B:

Create harness A and harness B as shown below by using the electrical harness workbench in CATIA V5.

First, all the connectors are placed at their desired locations. Second, bundle segments are created between the connectors with branch points and branches.

Bundle diameter is assumed to be 10mm, and 5mm for different bundle segments. Bend ratio is given as 1.4 and slack is given as 0% for all the bundle segments.

HARNESS A:

HARNESS B:

ASSEMBLE HARNESS A & B:

In this step, we have to interconnect the Wiring Harness A and Harness B electrically. There are a few steps that have to be followed to connect the two harnesses electrically.

First, make a new product file in CATIA and rename it as "FINAL HARNESS ASSEMBLY". Make sure to open the three windows vertically as shown below.

Second, copy both harness A and harness B and paste it into the newly created product file to make the final harness assembly as shown below.

Then Move to Electrical Assembly Design, Using connect Electrical Device tool to connect two male and female connectors.

Final Harenss A and B Assembly

CHECK BUNDLE CONTINUITY:

After Harness A and Harness B are created the next step is to check the bundle continuity. 

First, we have to make sure multi-branchable is selected and then we have to go in Edit>Search>Advanced>Electrical Workbench>Type-Bundle Segment>Attribute-Fully Connected.

Selecting the "TRUE" option will show all the connected bundle segments while selecting the "FALSE" option will show all the non-connected bundle-segments.

For now, we will select the "FALSE" option and search for results. All the bundle segments in Harness A  will not be displayed showing that there is bundle continuity.

For Harness B ,we will  also select the "TRUE" option and search for results. All the bundle segments in Harness B will be displayed showing that there is bundle continuity.

 ADDING ANNOTATIONS:

 In this step, we will be adding annotations for all the electrical connectors.

Annotations are used to show connector functions and additional information. They are defined in Assembly Design Workbench of CATIA V5. 

First, we have to choose a plane on which the annotation will be placed. Here we will be choosing the front plane as shown below for Harness A. We should make sure that the geometrical bundle is active before choosing the annotation plane.

HARNESS A

HARNESS B

 CHECK BUNDLE WARNINGS:

 In this step, we will be checking bundle warnings in Harness A and B.

Geometrical bundle warnings are shown for Bend radius, Bundle diameter, Vector position. If these values or inputs are incorrect then the yellow flash will appear in the tree structure next to the branchable with problems. Depending on the route of the bundle segment we can correct the issue by adding some extra slack or by changing vector position of the segment point. In our case, we have one error as shown below.

 

This error can be corrected by changing the direction of routing. We should "reverse tangent" or change the direction of the routing at the branch point 4 as shown below.

 

CONVERT PART FILE AND IGS FILE:

In this last step we have to convert out Final Harness Assembly file into PART file and IGS format. In order to do this we should follow the steps as shown below.

Mechanical Assembly Workbench>Tools>Generate CAT Part from product

Once the CAT part is created the whole product file is converted into a single part. At this stage, it can be noticed that all the bundle segments are grey in color. So, we will go back and add green color to each bundle segment and some colors to each connectors, so that they look same as the Final Harness Assembly.

 

 In the end, we can use the "SAVE AS" feature to save the CAT part file as IGS file as shown below.

CONCLUSION:

 Here,The electrical connectors were defined with necessary properties and Created two harness assembles from the given layout and conected with connector.then checked bundle continuity,bundle warnings and and annotations, finally changed to part file an igs file format.