Best way to make instances of a cable harness?

Question

I'm working in CREO 10, but I'm very new to it after many years of Inventor and SolidWorks.

I have a cable assembly that I made without using the cable tools. I have a PCB, roughly 10" length of ribbon cable doing a 180 turn (modelled as a U-shaped part), and a 2nd PCB. I have 2 locations where I use this harness, and the placement of PCB 1 relative to PCB 2 is about 1/2" different between the 2 location. I'm trying to make 2 versions of the same assembly (since we'll use the same PN for both locations), where the length of legs of the 'U' shaped cable change. On one instance, both legs should be the same length. On the other instance, the legs should be 1/2" different, but still 10" total path length.

Based on googling, it looks like my options might be a Family Table at the Part and Assembly level to select the leg length. But maybe it makes more sense to do a Spine Bend (if I can figure it out) on a straight base part? Or some other approach?

tbraxton · Accepted Answer

Assuming you intend to actually have the cables fabricated and this is not just for illustration.

I would develop the flat pattern of the cable as the design model and then "bend" it to shape to validate the positions in a 3D model using spinal bend with the proximal and distal connectors in situ in assembly mode.

There are of course other options without using Pro/Cable. I have used sheet-metal to do this with flexible circuits to flatten them when modeling them in the formed state and that could be an option here as well.

If you need to vary the length of the ribbon, a family table would work.

tbraxton · Answer

To see some spinal bend examples check out this old thread. warp tool bend axis location - PTC Community

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