Problem with jumper wire in NWF (neutral wire file) in WF4

[MIke2]

How should a jumper wire in a connector be formated in a NWF? WF4 tells me that the same wire cannot be routed to the same entry port. For every other wire in the wirelist one round designated entry port works find when autorouting, but the jumper wire fails. This is my NWF format for the jumper wire (this format works for every other wire):

NEW CONNECTOR +CIT-RKS2

PARAMETER MODEL_NAME 16087-C

PARAMETER REF_DES +CIT-RKS2

PARAMETER NUM_OF_PINS 1

PARAMETER ENTRY_PORT ENTRY1

PARAMTER GROUPING ROUND

NEW WIRE W7-1_BLK18 18BLK

ATTACH +CIT-RKS2 " " +CIT-RKS2 " "

Its seems as if I need a mutiple entry port format of some sort.

[BrianMartin]

Hi Mike...

The round entry port should be fine. I would take a closer look at the attach statement in this one. I don't understand the syntax of the "+" signs and the " " (empty double quotes). It's typically:

ATTACH <From Connector Ref Des> <From Pin> <To Connector Ref Des> <To Pin>

Your statement seems to be saying the connector name is "+CIT-RKS2" which is something I didn't even know was possible. I didn't think you could use a "+" in the name of a connector. More importantly, there is no pin information at all. If you're jumpering between pin 1 and pin 2, then add those pin names. If this is some kind of weird internal jumper, I'd make up a pin name for them. You can't jump from one pin to the same exact pin... (that's obviously not a jumper) but you can from pin to pin. The problem here (as far as I can tell) is that you have no pins at all.

Let me know if that makes sense.

Thanks!

-Brian

[BrianHawley]

"PARAMETER NUM_OF_PINS 1"

The problem seems to be you can't have a jumper going from the only pin on the connector to itself. The connector is defined as having just one pin.

Brian

A different Brian, trying to learn from the Ninja Master

[MIke2]

Thanks guys for your suggestions. To re-state my issue. This format works for every wire except a jumper wire in the same connector. The connector name +XXXXX is allowed. If I add multiple pins to a connector then I have to specify the pin # in my wire list for all pins in that connector. It would seem that there should be a way to specify a jumper wire without adding the pin # detail for every other pin. Which leads me to my only issue which is WF4 cabling will fail this wire when attempting to autoroute. It has no problem with reading ATTACH +CIT-RKS2 "" +CIT-RKS2 "" in the NWF. So I believe I will just have to manually route the jumper wires and be done with it..

[BrianMartin]

Hi Mike...

How did you come up with the format for "Attach" that you're using. Some people manually route wires and then export them as an NWF. Then, they open the NWF, figure out what format Pro/E wants for the NWF, and then mimic that format in their own NWFs.

The reason I'm asking is that in over 20 years of doing cabling and working with NWF's, I've never seen that empty pin "" configuration. I still believe this is why you're having the problem. If I don't want to mess with numerous pins, I just define ONE pin. Every connector gets at least ONE pin. I've never used a connector without one. When you go to redefine a connector and view the pin information, what does it say if there are no pins specified? I'm really curious because this is something totally foreign to me... and I thought I'd seen everything there was to see with an NWF.

Right now you have a process that includes using no pin information. That works for you- and I understand that. If you were to try one single pin, that pin would be the same for every connector so there's really no difference in writing ATTACH +CIT-RKS2 1 +CIT-RKS2 1 or ATTACH +CIT-RKS2 "" +CIT-RKS2 ""

If that works, maybe we have a bug... or maybe the bug is that the 'no pin' configuration works when it should be generating an error?

Thanks...

-Brian

[MIke2]

Hi Brian,

You might be right. Maybe it is a bug to allow me to not have any pin # specified. My co-worker had suggested using pin 1 for all wires connections except jumper wires whose second pin would be pin 2. For example :

NEW CONNECTOR +CIT-RKS2

PARAMETER NUM_OF_PINS 2

PIN 1

PARAMETER ENTRY_PORT ENTRY1

PARAMETER GROUP ROUNDING

PIN2

PARAMETER ENTRY_PORT ENTRY2

PARAMETER GROUP ROUNDING

NEW WIRE W7-1_BLK18 18BLK

ATTACH +CIF-RKS2 "1" +CIT-RKS2 "2"

NEW WIRE W8-1_BLK18 18BLK

ATTACH +CIF-RKS2 "1" +CIT-RKS3 "1"

Using this format every connector would have two pins & 2 entry ports. Since cabling only allows a single wire to be connected to an entry port once. This would cover all wires and all jumper wires for all connectors. Originally I didn't see the need to have the pin # in the wire list but I agree with you that there really is no difference in using pin "" or pin "1". Thanks for your help.

[BrianMartin]

Hi Mike...

There's a bit of a tweak you can use in your plan of having two pins. You could call one pin "Pin 1" and call the second one "Pin Jumper". It's little known outside of those using Creo Schematics but you're not limited to giving pins numeric names. You can call a pin "jumper" then your attach statement would read:

NEW WIRE W7-1_BLK18 18BLK

ATTACH +CIF-RKS2 1 +CIT-RKS2 Jumper

I added some spaces so you can see the 4 parameters used for the attach command more clearly. Also, you do not need to put double quotes around your pin names. It's a minor point but anything you can do to simplify the NWF and the creation of it saves time.

If you decide to call your jumper pin jumper that kind of makes the NWF file easier to read later. It sort of "self-comments" what you're trying to do.

On a unrelated note... I have a new tool I've been writing and testing. It's an NWF creation tool. Right now it's still in the development phase. The intent is for you to create your commonly used spools and connectors and save them to a database (through the tool interface). You can define them on the fly, too but I assume most people would want to save their common objects for reuse later. Then, you create a new harness "project" by pulling in the connectors and spools you need and then specifying the From/To connector information. The From/To data can be entered manually from the interface or read in from Excel, Access, Word, Mentor Graphics, or a text file. As a last step, you export an NWF file and use that as your logical reference in Creo. This would be for people who don't use Creo Schematics obviously.

Would this be something you'd be interested in trying out? As soon as I have some beta code to test, I'll need some people familiar with NWF's to test the tool to insure it's generating the anticipated output. Once I get the NWF part working, I'm going to add support for XML, too. That would be a better interface option but I want to dig through Creo Schematics to make sure I can output the same data it can export. This isn't a replacement of Schematics. Instead. it's a tool to assist the majority of people who do not use it but still want to autoroute in Creo Cabling without the hassle of learning or editing an NWF.

Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks,

-Brian

[MIke2]

Hi Brian,

Sorry for delayed response - had a hot project. Thanks for the info about the pin jumper. I am using your suggestion and it works great. Our plan is to implement Autocad electrical for schematics but we aren't there yet. So yes I would be interested in using your NWF creation tool. One last related question. Is a "net" a jumper wire or something else? Thanks for your help.

[BrianMartin]

HI Mike...

A net is definitely something else. In fact this was one command I was going to use for my first Ninja Cabling presentation because no one I've ever encountered seemed to know what it was. I spent quite of bit of time learning and understanding it.

For your purposes, it wouldn't help you. There is some general information on them in the help files if you're curious but normally they're not used.

I need to work on the NWF tool a bit more but I'll send it along so you can test it out. I'll be interested in your feedback. I have to respond to someone else that asked about it but I, too, have been on the hot seat lately!

Thanks!

-Brian