Yes, it does take some time to get acquainted with the cabling module. But in the end I (personally) like the Creo cabling module actually more than the other option that we have… the Solidworks cabling (Except for creating the drawings).
We needed to take the basic cabling course before any of us understood anything about the cabling module. Fortunately we have gotten to a point that it is fairly easy to add small and even some larger cable assemblies into our devices.
You can get fairly accurate split length dimensions from the flat harness assembly (see image “whole_drw.jpg”). What I understood is that the HMX-extension (Harness Manufacturing Extension) creates these splits (and lengths) automatically. Unfortunately, though, we do not have HMX license so I must always do the File-Manufacturing-Harness –flat diagrams for the cables. Fortunately, after doing so many of those, I have grown used to doing the “regular” flat diagrams. They work pretty well in most cases (not always). There are some good design practices in flattening the cables…
For our cable guys the most important tips are...
1. Make your cable network as good as possible.
- The cable sheaths are cut to some network point close to the connector. Wires also bundle nicely around the cable network (you can select flat or round). Sometimes the cable routing fails if your network has too tight turns.
- it seems that if you add a network point to your network then all your flat harness assemblies break. So make sure that the cable routes are finished before starting to flatten the cables to make the drawings.
2. Automatic flattening usually has all the wires going all over the connectors. Only a single wire is connected physically. Your flat diagram looks neater if you delete all the “loose”-segments (see images “segments_after_autofan.jpg” and “segments_deleted.jpg” (or flatten manually).
3. Of course… always use a skeleton for your wiring assemblies. Use shrinkwrap to copy the necessary surfaces etc. from the main assembly.
- Normally our skeleton contains the coordinates and the connectors are mated to those coordinates.
- Skeleton also includes the axes, surfaces etc. for the network routes.
- This example does not have any skeleton. I added the mate coordinates to the top of the model tree.
4. Always use schematic to create the xml-file. Only insane people want to manually route cables (meaning that you manually select pin 1 from connector 1… goes to pin x on connector y) you can try it once… yes it works also. We use kicad (free, but Python programming skills required) and Creo Schematic is ok also (except that it is pain to get started with Creo Schematic). Some people use Excel to generate the xml-files… even that is better than manual routing. The example zip package contains the xml-file from Kicad (text file) which was used to create this example.
With a perfect network you can route all your wires and cables with just a few clicks (select “Route Cables → Binoculars → select all routable wires and cables and press “Apply”).
I attach all the design files of the demo here also. Unfortunately they are Creo 4.0 files so you have to have 4.0 or later version. But all Cabling features are still the same in Creo 2.0 (vs 4.0). Our previous version was 2.0 and even the few “features” are still the same in 4.0 (I tried version 7 and the cabling module was more or less identical to Creo 2.0).
Best Regards,
Lars KaputtCbl
