Cable Routing Suggestion / Tips / Ideas

[Yogesh.T]

What is the best way to route cabling? P clips assembly first and then route thru them or any other ideas? Please suggest. See image 

[Chris3 · Accepted solution]

"best" depends on the situation. For complicated harnesses its recommended that you have a skeleton model that everything ties back to. You can assemble your cable ties to the skeleton and route your cables through the same CSYS, pnts, curves, etc.

You want to avoid routing cables using geometry because geometry changes and then all of your cable locations need to be updated. Better to define all of your locations based off top down design datums that everything else then also is based off.

[Yogesh.T]

Good point! I like this approach. So, to understand it clearer, locate/attach cable routing with planes, coordinates, axis, points from a main created skeleton and never thru features like eg. axis of P Clip mounted multiple locations in vehicle. Right? 

This way, changes in geometry, axis or anything will have null effect on my cabling. 

I have understood the concept but if you have a small example link to do so, it will reenforce better & strong. Thanks!

[Chris3]

Yes you have it, but to add onto what you said, the P-Clip can also be assembled using the same skeleton CSYS so that the cable and clip are being driven by the same references.

What we often do is to activate the skeleton, make a CSYS that is dependent (external reference) on a assembly component and then while still in the dialog box for making that CSYS, pick a CSYS in the skeleton and Creo will copy the transformations into the CSYS creation dialog box. This removes the external reference and fixes it in place.

Other companies will make a shrink wrap / copy geom of selected surfaces and then use those surfaces for routing. You could consider that as well. Routing through datums is the most robust (failure proof) way though. The downside is that can be harder to update when you need to move things. The key is to think through what could change before you start building your structure and then build it in a way that you can change it without a lot of hassle. For instance if you have a E-Box with 12 connectors, there should be 1 CSYS for the main transformation change. The other 11 should be based off the 1st CSYS reference so that when the E-Box moves you only need to change one CSYS and the rest move with that one move.