Inventor Cable and Harness

[twinz3950]

I am working on creating a wire harness, and I have several parts my company purchases that have pigtails already attached to them.  One example is for the brand of lights that we are using come with a plug and has two wires with no ends already attached to the plug. In manufacturing we would just solder the wire to our main harness, and the wires in our main harness and the wires that are already attached to the plug would be encased with either a wire sleeve, corrugated tube or any other appropriate harness covering.  My question is how would I do this in inventor incorporating the purchased plug into the wire harness.  I must maintaining the length of wire that the plug comes with (about 12") so the BOM of the main harness does not incorporate these wires in the report of wire needed, and have everything routed in one main harness covering (sheathing)

[mcgyvr]

2 ways I can think of now.

#1-Just keep the plug without wires as a separate part in your iam file then add the harness/wires and set it to reference.

#2-Create the harness (same part number as your plug), drag/drop the plug ipt into the harness node and then in the bom set it to purchased.

either way your parts list will only show the single part number. 

[twinz3950]

Thank you for your response. I will try your soulution, and let you know if either one meets my needs.

[twinz3950]

I created harness with the part (same part number as the part) and set it to Purchased.  I have both that harness and my main harness in an assembly.  How do I take the two wires attached to the separt part ( harness) and have them run through the same loom of the main harness?

[mcgyvr · Accepted solution]

---

@twinz3950 wrote:

I created harness with the part (same part number as the part) and set it to Purchased.  I have both that harness and my main harness in an assembly.  How do I take the two wires attached to the separt part ( harness) and have them run through the same loom of the main harness?

---

I'm not sure you can.. If you mean "segment" in Inventor.. You can only route wires in the same harness node.

This is one of the many limitations with the harness module. Its really ONLY intended for nailboard type harnesses created as subassemblies before the final build.

"split loom",etc... applied in the top level final assembly (covering multiple harnesses) is not something Inventor does "easy button" style and technically is NOT part of a harness subassembly in the real world either. 

[twinz3950]

Thank you for your help.

[stefan.posey]

One approach I have been using for parts that come with pig tails is:

1. Place the vendor provided cad file into a harness assembly.

2. Place a central pin on the vendor file.

3. Run the wire harness to the connector (as you would with a normal harness).

4. Go to BoM manager.

5. Set the cable or wires as reference (or phantom).

6. This will cause the cable or wires that the harness tool create to be ignored by the BoM.

For info on BoM Types See:

- "Inventor BOM Structure Types and how they behave in Vault"

- https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/vault-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles...

- "Structure of bills of materials"

- https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2014...