Cables / Wire Harnesses...
Documenting the design with 3D models, 2D Drawings, and Schematics…
Many wire harness / cable drawings I've seen over the years consist of schematics, along with some notes about distances between connectors, etc. As a mechanical engineer, it seemed to me these never completely conveyed what the harness was going to actually look like.
As a young engineer right out of college, I was assigned creating a harness drawing to go along with other mechanical items I was working on for a robotic arm for a surgical robotic system. Because of the complexity of the harness, I made a mechanical drawing to go along with the schematic (in Autocad at the time, because it seemed much easier than to create the model in Solidworks, which was being used for everything else).
As the years have gone by, I've made Solidworks templates / building blocks for cable / wire harness components to use in 3D models of the Cables, as well as 2D drawings of somewhat "flat" versions of the cables / wire harnesses. (These "flat" models are 3D Solidworks models, but they are modeled in a linear / shortened length state).
When creating the mechanical design of a harness, I prefer to supply the following:
3D model that is used within the mechanical assembly model (this can be shown on the 2D drawing for reference as well)
2D dimensioned drawing, identifying all of the components
Wiring schematic (I typically work with an electrical engineer on the schematic).
The lengths of the splines used to create the 3D models can be examined to get a good feel for the length of the cables. If the length of the spline is 10 inches, I may add a couple inches to the 2D drawing for good measure, etc…
This seems to be the sweet-spot for documentation for harnesses. (I've tried using the Solidworks routing and have found life to simpler by using basic components I've modeled that any Solidworks user could use).
