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1-Visitor
October 14, 2013
Question

twisted pair

  • October 14, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 4186 views

Has anyone routed a twisted pair of wires? Is so, could you give a quick explanation of how?

Thanks

August

    2 replies

    17-Peridot
    October 14, 2013

    We have discussed twisted bundles in the past but I am not sure how the routing works.

    Maybe these discussions will help:

    How to create Twisted wires

    Cable Assembly w/ Twisted Wires

    13-Aquamarine
    October 15, 2013

    Hi August...

    Creo Cabling doesn't have a feature for this. You can automatically route the wires and give them densities such that they can mimic real-world twisted pairs. However, there is no inherent feature within the software to give you a nice twisted wire image.

    The cabling package is more concerned with the connections being made between connectors and components. It's not necessarily trying to give you a true-to-life picture of cables/wires with real-world physics. That's asking a whole heck of a lot. I'm sure it could be done but the performance hit you'd take would make it useless. Give computers another 10 years and then maybe we'll have the processing power for that kind of on-the-fly geometry. Right now I think it's a bit out of reach.

    However, you can certainly use the techniques Antonius linked (above) to help you model a small chunk of wires that appear twisted. Then you can use those as a symbol or graphic on the field of your drawing. In your cabling model, perhaps you'd just bundle everything together. This will eliminate the need to see individual twisting wires. The symbol/graphic you've created will provide a sample of what the wires will look like "in real life" while the bundled version will show up in your model for best performance.

    Am I making sense here? Let me know if I'm talking in circles.

    Thanks!
    -Brian

    17-Peridot
    October 15, 2013

    I knew Brian would have the answer. I have often had to put a view on a drawing "explaining" the twists per inch to the supplier. But Brian is right; modeling wires in sweeps along splines is a huge resource overhead. It is almost worth keeping "snip-its" of sample cable models for drawings to be added into the drawing as an "unrelated" model. Another fine example is -cable prep- views where you may need to specify special cable prep operations for terminations.

    13-Aquamarine
    October 15, 2013

    Yep... excellent points. I worked on this cool retractable bridge project some years ago. The bridge was carried and deployed from a modified tank. We needed to route wires all throughout the tank. We needed numerous special views explaining wire prep, special terminations, shielding, etc. We used symbols and unrelated model views for this all the time. We had a small library we'd use... which is exactly what you've recommended!

    Thanks..

    -Brian