Custom Feature: Cable/Wire Routing

Wout_Van_Gerven

Hi Neil, I really like the feature you have created. What I am missing is the bundle length and placement. And I cannot add stiplenght to the BOM. Do you know a way. Is this on the way?

NeilCooke

Wout_Van_Gerven said:

Hi Neil, I really like the feature you have created. What I am missing is the bundle length and placement. And I cannot add stiplenght to the BOM. Do you know a way. Is this on the way?

Thanks! Can you be a bit more specifc with "bundle length and placement"? All the lengths are in the custom table, but I am waiting on this https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/15421/custom-tables-in-drawings to be implemented to get it on drawings. 

NeilCooke

Changelog for Release 1.178

⭐ Added numeric range input for defining connectors with many pins

When defining aerospace connectors and others where pin count is high, you can now define a range of values by using the semi-colon character. For example, instead of entering 1,2,3,4,5..., 50 you can enter 1;50. This will only work with numeric values right now, so A1;A10 will not work.

Wout_Van_Gerven

NeilCooke said:

Wout_Van_Gerven said:

Hi Neil, I really like the feature you have created. What I am missing is the bundle length and placement. And I cannot add stiplenght to the BOM. Do you know a way. Is this on the way?

Thanks! Can you be a bit more specifc with "bundle length and placement"? All the lengths are in the custom table, but I am waiting on this https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/15421/custom-tables-in-drawings to be implemented to get it on drawings. 

I want to know where my cables will be spliced when I use the bundle feature or route them along a path. What is the length or placement of the splice and what is the length of the black part (bundle) or where can I find that to add to the table?

NeilCooke

Wout_Van_Gerven said:

I want to know where my cables will be spliced when I use the bundle feature or route them along a path. What is the length or placement of the splice and what is the length of the black part (bundle) or where can I find that to add to the table?

OK thanks for the clarification. It's coming, but in the meantime you can only measure the individual centrelines (splines) to get the info you need. 

James_Eastburn

Neil,

This wiring feature script is amazing. I've read through the whole thread and see a couple references to features being added to create flattened drawings, including waiting on a new OnShape feature needed to insert a custom table. Does this mean there is already a possible workflow to create the flattened drawing sans BOM table? How would you go about doing that?

I'm also curious if it's possible to handle crimp terminals inserted into a multi-terminal connector. I suppose this could be handled easily by considering only the crimp terminals, but then the connector body isn't considered part of the harness.

Sorry if any of this line of questioning is missing something obvious. I actually haven't had a chance to dive in to using the feature quite yet. I'm trying to gauge if it is worth using as a new way for my company to create wire/cable/harness drawings.

NeilCooke

James_Eastburn said:

Neil,

This wiring feature script is amazing. I've read through the whole thread and see a couple references to features being added to create flattened drawings, including waiting on a new OnShape feature needed to insert a custom table. Does this mean there is already a possible workflow to create the flattened drawing sans BOM table? How would you go about doing that?

I'm also curious if it's possible to handle crimp terminals inserted into a multi-terminal connector. I suppose this could be handled easily by considering only the crimp terminals, but then the connector body isn't considered part of the harness.

Sorry if any of this line of questioning is missing something obvious. I actually haven't had a chance to dive in to using the feature quite yet. I'm trying to gauge if it is worth using as a new way for my company to create wire/cable/harness drawings.

Thank you, James, that's very kind. Flattened harness is still WIP - waiting on some bug fixes before I can finish it.

Currently, the way to add terminals is in the part studio, then use the connector feature to add the terminals and connector as one item - the intention then is to extract the "BOM" for each connector/terminal collection once the drawing tables feature is added.

domi_gomez

Thank you for this amazing feature!

I would like to ask if would possible to have an advance CSV export including the Bézier curves parameters.

That would open the doors for amazing workflows, as many other calculation/processes/tool can use this to have a better idea of the wiring than a mesh itself.

NeilCooke

Changelog for 1.179

⭐ Wire refs and Wire routes can now be created manually without needing to import a CSV file first
⭐ Changed the behaviour of References in the Wire data table to make it easier to see which ones have already been defined
⭐ Fixed an issue with Wire ref names being auto-populated more than once
⭐ Fixed an issue with incomplete Wire refs being able to be defined again in another feature
⭐ Fixed empty custom table displaying errors

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/wey9i9o4yr?embedType=async&seo=true&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=1280

NeilCooke

domi_gomez said:

Thank you for this amazing feature!

I would like to ask if would possible to have an advance CSV export including the Bézier curves parameters.

That would open the doors for amazing workflows, as many other calculation/processes/tool can use this to have a better idea of the wiring than a mesh itself.

Thank you! Can you be a bit more specific? What parameters do you want and what would you want to do with them?

eric_pesty

@NeilCooke
I was just test driving this as not needing a CSV seemed it would fit our usual workflow better. I'm running into an issue though: the "Wire route" doesn't seem to go into "manual" mode when I type in a wire ID (and I can't select any from-to)...

Happy to share the doc as it's just a test run (I think I've shared it with you?)

NeilCooke

Thanks @eric_pesty don't know how I missed that - my QA regime is usually quite thorough - fixed now, please try again.

eric_pesty

Thanks @NeilCooke
Making progress now. I have another issue that I think is related to the units setup but my workspace is in inches and I'm using the default (i.e. didn't import variables to setup the cabling env.) and when I pick a wire gauge it seems like it's using the size in mm and interpreting it in inches or something like this as my 18Ga wire shows in the table as 1.03in OD...

eric_pesty

Ok, I had to override the "wireLengthUnits" to 1mm and it seems to be behaving as expected...

eric_pesty

Ok,
I'm liking it now that I've played with it a bit more...
I do have a use case where I'm not sure what the best option would be... We use different quite a few board mounted connectors that accept wires directly like these:



Now I can definitely set them up with the correct refs but when I go to add a wire ref using the context version of these I have to pick every pin and set the strip length stub length again... Which isn't ideal.



I had the idea to create a "dummy" connector that would "plug" into these. It works (as far as getting reference pins and strip length etc), but then I'm left with this "dummy" part in my harness that I'm not sure what to do with...

Not sure what the best way to handle this would be, I'm guessing you can't "retrieve" that info from the context but maybe if the connector definition allowed using surfaces (and excluding from the harness composite) it would be cleaner.



Side note:
I'm experimenting with ways to show the harness in different "positions" as we do this quite a bit: for example when we have a door that opens we usually create a "door closed" and "door open" assembly configurations and matching configurations of our harness to make sure the routing works in both case as well as for user documentation etc...

Because the wire route selection can't be configured (and it would be too messy anyway), the process involves:
- Creating two contexts for the different positions and two configurations in the harness PS
- Setting up wire references either by creating two different refs with configured suppression for the end that moves or configuring the "inserted" dummy position.
- Create separate wire routes for the open and closed (and configuring their suppression so there's only one)
- Creating a "higher level" composite that is configured to contain either of routes composites and using this in the assembly.
  - This does work reasonably and that last part is what we do when we "manually" draw a harness
  - This is an opportunity to also get rid of the dummy by using a "delete part" to explode the composite and a second delete to get rid of the dummy bits but it's a bit more cumbersome than it could be...

Anyway, thought I would share where I got with testing the process! I have to say creating the wire refs and routes is pretty slick once that's all setup properly!

NeilCooke

eric_pesty said:

Thanks @NeilCooke
Making progress now. I have another issue that I think is related to the units setup but my workspace is in inches and I'm using the default (i.e. didn't import variables to setup the cabling env.) and when I pick a wire gauge it seems like it's using the size in mm and interpreting it in inches or something like this as my 18Ga wire shows in the table as 1.03in OD...

OK fixed it, thanks again. Not having a good day, am I? I'll digest your other comments next week. 

eric_pesty

Thanks for the quick fix!
I think I found another issue though, I'm getting clips flipping direction (and just getting scrambled) when I add a point to a segment on certain routes:



The "use clip order" also has an impact but it still gets either way. I do wonder if this happening because the "first clip" is "behind" the starting point of the connector somehow...

Here's the other end of the same cable:

eric_pesty

Another update: it looks like I was able to "trick it" by removing the first corner from the clip and making that into a route segment (and editing it):

NeilCooke

@eric_pesty clip order and entry/exit direction is determined by shortest distance by default. The only way you can override that is with the clip order option and by clicking a clip while in edit mode and flipping the arrow. If you cannot control the clips then it’s an interesting test case and I’d like to take a look if possible. 

eric_pesty

NeilCooke said:

@eric_pesty clip order and entry/exit direction is determined by shortest distance by default. The only way you can override that is with the clip order option and by clicking a clip while in edit mode and flipping the arrow. If you cannot control the clips then it’s an interesting test case and I’d like to take a look if possible. 

Interesting, I had totally missed the "flip" option for the clips... So I got excited for a bit but it seems to be ignoring it in this case.
I just @mentioned you on the feature in the doc so you should be able to see it... Let me know!

Really enjoying the feature set by the way! looking forward to when we can use it generate a "straight" view for a drawing (and we are able to insert a BOM)!

eric_pesty

@NeilCooke
One more thing: I'm sure there's a plan for showing the strip lengths for the cable jacket (guessing columns in the table), but we also would like a mechanism to see the length of a segment between two clips. One of the things we use 3d cable routes is to check what happens to a cable when our enclosure door is open vs closed so we need to match the length of the spans between the last clip on the door span and the first clip on the fixed side. These can be drawn as two separate routes and it works well enough but right now you can only measure the length of the spline when the "show wires/cables" is unchecked.

EDIT: ok, I just realized that the curve remains even when the checkbox is on, however it's hard to get to since it's invisible. It can be reached through "select other" so this might be good enough for now...
I guess a "straightened" version would also benefit from including that information so a mechanism for that would be nice...

Kristoffer_Nilsson

To add to @eric_pesty last comment, and this might have been brought up before, but it would be nice if we could force a cable/harness to be a certain length. This would help realize if the cable is long enough in two different installations or if we have an off the shelf cable with specific length to route to see where we could gather the slack.