Electrical Wire Harness Design

ELECTRICAL WIRE HARNESS DESIGN Why WIRE HARNESS is required? The total length of wires can be as much as 3 to 4 km in a car, 600 km in an aircraft, while the total cable length in a cruise ship can reach up to 2500 km. the weight of the components and harnesses needs to be tracked and optimized in order to keep the cost of harnesses under control. This integrated environment improves design quality, drastically reduces time needed for modifications and minimizes errors, leading to optimizing the costs.

What is Electrical Wire? Electrical Wire is a insulated conductor used to carry electricity

What is a Electrical Cable/ Bundle? A cable is two or more wires running side by side and bonded, twisted or braided together to form a single assembly. Protective Coverings: There are two types of protective coverings to the harness. 1. Protective tape 2. Protective corrugated tube. Protective coverings are instantiated from an electrical catalog. By default, the protective covering will cover the entire bundle segment, however, it can be adjusted to cover just particular segments.

Corrugated Tube Cable Protective tape

Protective Covering with Supports There may be many times when you want to apply protective covering around your bundle just at the support locations. This keeps the bundle protected in just the areas susceptible to cutting and damage by the support.

Settings in CATIA: Tools è Options è

è Part Infrastructure è General è Activate Keep Link with Selected Object (To Keep link between Cable & Support) è Part Infrastructure è General èUncheck Use Root context in Assembly è Product Structure è Tree Customization è Relations è Activate(Yes) è Equipment & Systems è Harness Management è Select the required Bundle Segment Profile è Equipment & Systems è Electrical Process Interfacing è Enable External System Interfacing & Paste the path of XML File Location in "Electrical iXF Data Repository" Box è Parameters & Measure è Knowledge Environment è Activate Load Extended Language Libraries

Types of Licensing: ELB

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Electrical Library 2

EHI

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Electrical Harness Installation 2

EWR

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Electrical Wire Routing 2

EHF

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Electrical Harness Flattening 2

One configuration License(Eg: HD2, MD2, XM2 etc.) has to be selected along with any of the above Product License. Otherwise below warning will be displayed.

EL EH

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ELB: ELB allows users to create and manage catalogues containing electrical components. This product extends mechanical parts and assemblies with electrical behaviors to define electrical components, such as connectors, equipments, shells, supports and protections. These devices can be stored in catalogues in the same way as mechanical CATIA V5 parts/assemblies. When the components are placed from the catalogue in the DMU, it takes into account all pre-defined mechanical constraints, this allowing a Correct use/placement of the devices.

Electrical Part Design: This Workbench is used to add an Electrical Behavior to a Mechanical Part. It means Converting Mechanical Structure into Electrical Definitions. Electrical Assembly Design: This Workbench provides functions to link & unlink Electrical Components. For instance an Equipment with a Device connector. This Workbench allows the Electrical Assemblies creation of Electrical Components. Because of Electrical Definitions constraints are not required in Assembly.

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EHI: Defining an electrical harness requires two steps. You must first define the required connectors and connection points. Once you have these connections, you are ready to begin defining the geometric bundle that links the various connection points. These geometric bundles will behave as a space reservation for the wiring they will contain. Here you will not be defining the actual wires within the geometric bundle, but rather just the overall size and shape of the geometric bundle that will contain the wiring. This will Define the bundle as a whole for space reservation and connectivity information and not to define pin to pin connectivity. Pin to Pin connectivity you will be done in the Electrical Wire Routing workbench

There are two workbenches involved in electrical harness design. They are the Electrical Harness Assembly and the Electrical Harness Installation workbenches. The two workbenches are used simultaneously to define the geometric bundle. Although the Electrical Harness Installation workbench is a separate workbench, it is generally only accessed through the Electrical Harness Assembly workbench when defining a specific bundle segment. This is a similar behavior to the Sketcher and Part Design workbenches. You generally do not access the sketcher workbench directly, but instead you access sketcher through the Part Design workbench. Electrical Harness Assembly: This workbench will allow you to work with the geometric bundle as a whole. Electrical Harness Installation: This workbench will allow you to define the specific bundle segment and route the bundle with Realistic shape of the harnesses by taking into account the material characteristics

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EWR: Based on the definition of the wires in the schematic/functional application(ECAD data like EPlan) CATIA – Electrical Wire Routing 2 (EWR) will

route these wires through the created bundles, completing the electrical wire harness system. Two types reports can be generated: 1. HTML report files, including the list of physical wires created at routing step 2. XML files containing the complete harness description to be reused for harness manufacturing and documentation.

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EHF: EHF extracts 3D Electrical data and provides a flattened view of the Electrical Harness. It is provided with a set of tools to manipulate bundle segments in term

of position to reach the adequate solution. It produce 2D associative drawings for inspection and documentation purpose. EHF also enables 3D flattened view of harness. Therefore, if a bundle segment that is very rigid must keep its original bended shape. 3D Mechanical constraints defined with Electrical Harness Installation (EHI) are preserved, so that bend radius and length of bundle segment are still constrained. EHF provides all the manufacturing documentation.

Exercise: Note: Always observe the Specification Tree in every step while working. 1. Create a small part in Part Design Workbench & name as Pin.

2. Switch to Electrical Part Design Workbench 3. Click on Define Mounting Equipment icon Specification Tree & click OK.

4. Define Cavity

by selecting hole 1

& select the Root part in the

5. After selecting the above options, Click OK & observe the changes in Specification Tree 6. Similarly Define Cavity for other Holes.

7. Now Define Bundle Connection Point

8. Now Define Cavity Connection Point

9. Save the File in Catalog. Creating a Bundle Segment: 1. Open Electrical Harness Assembly Workbench. Name the product Harness 1

2. Select the Geometrical Bundle icon specification

then select Harness 1 from the

tree. Notice a few things happen in the specification tree

With the default options, the product name will automatically change to Geometrical Bundle1. You can change the name of the bundle to anything you want. Change the name of Geometrical Bundle1 back to Harness 1. 3. Now call the Pin from Catalog browser (2 instances) 4. By using Compass, Position the Pins as shown in the below image 5. Now Click Bundle Segment 6. In Bundle Segment Definition Box, Click Route Definition

7. Select the points of Pin1 & Pin2

8. After click OK., Bundle Segment Definition Box appears. 9. Here you can Define Diameter, Bend Radius Ratio, Build Mode(Slack Length & Bend). 10. In Build Mode we have 3 options :Slack, Length & Bend; This options can be selected as per customer Requirement. 11. Click OK to create a Bundle.(Rib is created in Specification Feature.) 12. Now To edit this feature; Select Rib & click Bundle Segment