Routing Ribbon Cables with Folds

[JV_8930349]

I am trying to get a ribbon cable to route properly in an assembly, unfortunately I am not finding much info on this topic in the help files, this forum, or googling in general. I was able to get a spool set up and route some simple cables that are mostly straight with some ups and downs. Now I need to route a cable that makes some right angle turns by folding the ribbon. 

This help page shows what I am trying to do, but I can't make it work at all (the part around the folds always gets funky, image attached):

http://support.ptc.com/help/creo/creo_pma/usascii/index.html#page/electrical_design%2Fcable%2FAbout_Location_Points_for_Ribbon_Cables.html

I have also attached images of my spool setup. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

John Vickers

[Patriot_1776]

I've never actually used the wiring routing, only the piping, and that was way back....around 2000.  I did a series of ribbon cables back in maybe 2006, but I had to do it manually without the wiring extension, and back then, they didn't even have ribbon cable as an option.  It was pretty complicated in doing it to ensure that each wire in the ribbon had a perfectly circular cross-section, but it came out well despite the fact that the lengths of the wires actually were slightly different, and at the time I couldn't figure out a way to force them to all be the same length, and it wasn't a big enough deal to want to spend endless time trying to correct that.  We knew the length of the ribbon we needed, and just needed a representation in CAD for assembly dwgs.  I THINK I might have the answer for making the lengths equal, but at present don't have the time to monkey with it.

Best of luck!

[TomU]

@BrianMartin is the cabling guru.  Let's see if maybe he will respond.

[Lars_F · Accepted solution]

Hi,

How I route ribbon cables is...

First I make a network for the cable. The I route the cable using the network.

Then you can adjust the ribbon cable angle for each network location (edit definition for the network location point,  "Angle"-parameter). The default angles are 0, 90, 180, 270 degrees.

Attached are some images of where to find the angle parameter (edit_location.jpg).

Br. Lars

[JV_8930349]

Br. Lars,

When you posted this origonally I had not been able to get it to work reliably. I just needed to try again and got it to work. Some additional details I will add for others here:

1. As you start adding locations to the ribbon, make sure that you are getting the cable rotation you want up to the point you just added. You can ignore the end of the cable for now.
2. Generally the rotation for the first location you add is the rotation every point after will need before you reach a fold location.
3. When you get to where you want a fold, the location before the fold doesn't matter, it is the location right after the fold that dictates the turn. This is the point where you will need to change the rotation of the ribbon
4. You will need a second point beyond the fold before the ribbon is calculated properly. Once you add this point, use the point list to select the previous point to change the rotations until you get the fold you want. Then return to the last point you added and make it match the rotation of the one right after the fold. At this point you should have a good fold and first segment after the fold.
5. Keep adding additional points at the rotation of the 2 points after the fold.
6. rinse and repeat!

Good luck to everyone on getting ribbon cables to behave!

John Vickers