Cable harness view

Visual checks of complex cable harness systems are demanding for electromagnetic engineers. This is also because many variants of a product may exist with customer specific cable harnesses. In the automotive industry, for example, more than 300 variants of the same car may be manufactured. Because of this, it is necessary to identify which wire or cable carries which signal and where the cables lie with respect to the surrounding metallic or dielectric enclosure.

After import the cable harness configuration is displayed in a 3D graphic view. The example on the right shows an automotive cable harness system. It contains 240 connectors and 361 wires. In the wiring loom behind the dash board there are more than 100 different signals in 125 wires and cables.

When selecting signals, wires or cables in the CST CS navigation tree, these are automatically highlighted in the 3D graphic and the corresponding cross-section is displayed in the 2D view. The example on the left shows a bundle of single wires with typical dimensions. The bundle’s total diameter is about 2 cm. The signal names can be displayed on demand by a simple mouse-click. An object spy frame displays mouse position, cable type, and used materials.

Connectivity checks and signal identification are easily done with the built-in schematic view. You just have to select a connector by mouse in the navigation tree or in the 3D graphic view and choose this option from the popup menu and you get a clearly structured schematic overview. The example on the right is a subset of a real automotive cable harness. When selecting any signal line in the schematic its location will be automatically highlighted in the 3D graphic.