Harness Schematics

[tonyh88]

Hi,

I need to draw a lot of cable harness drawings to interconnect multiple PCBs and peripherals in a big project and I was wondering how you guys were handling that in Altium Designer. Or are you using a different software for that part?

Presently the way I was doing it is that I'm creating a multi part component for every connector in which I include:
1) a picture or dxf of the connector for the physical representation
2) a normal schematic component with all the connector parameters embedded for the wiring connection using standard wire in AD
3) extra parts if needed ( crimps,crimping tools, screws etc...)

I then create a separate schematic for every harness in which I place the components just created and a table image copied from an excel spreadsheet that lists all the wiring gauge/part number/pinout etc...

Something I don't like about this is that the table is not editable directly since it is an image and it requires back and forth between AD and excel

In a perfect world what I would like to be able to do is to include this table directly but I don't see an easy way to do that in Altium. Maybe in draftsman? I didn't play much with draftsman as some of our users are using circuit studio and I don't think it is compatible.

Anyway if you guys have any exemple or ressource to point in how you handle this kind of work I would be glad to hear !

Thanks!

[daedalus]

Last time I had a lot of cables to design I went with RapidHarness, which deals with BOM for the wire parts and produces decent 2d drawings, its not free but it is very easy to use.