Routing cables in Inventor

[T_Graziani]

My company designs electronic equipment racks(communication systems), and the cabling between them. There can be as many as a few thousand cables running between all our pieces of equipment. We'd like to create Inventor models of these cables, to do a better job of cable routing and to estimate cable lengths for our mfg. folks. I'd appreciate any help with tips, tricks, and techniques for routing cables. I'm familiar with the major IV reference websites, and will certainly check them out. But, I would definitely appreciate any help the IV community can give in moving forward. Thanks.

Tony

[jmartzig]

i think the major ref websites that you speak of would be the greatest help you can get or see post on jan 22, "tubing & wire routing" -Joe

[Anonymous]

Are they bundles and only require one path?
Either way, though, you might consider a master sketch (skeletal) approach or
the 3D Intersection approach.

~Larry

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

"T_Graziani" <
href="mailto:tonygraziani@hotmail.com">tonygraziani@hotmail.com> wrote
in message
href="news:f13fd27.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f13fd27.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

My
company designs electronic equipment racks(communication systems), and the
cabling between them. There can be as many as a few thousand cables running
between all our pieces of equipment. We'd like to create Inventor models of
these cables, to do a better job of cable routing and to estimate cable
lengths for our mfg. folks. I'd appreciate any help with tips, tricks, and
techniques for routing cables. I'm familiar with the major IV reference
websites, and will certainly check them out. But, I would definitely
appreciate any help the IV community can give in moving forward. Thanks.

Tony

[rllthomas]

Ah come on you know those pesky customers route the cable everywhere BUT where you intend, whats the point 🙂

Where do you work at?

Rich Thomas

[Anonymous]

I posted a method of using skeletal techniques to
do this in the old inventor support group (autodesk.inventor.support)  The
post was on 07-17-02, and was titled "A tip for adaptive tubing
runs"

I have a small example of the method around here
somewhere.  I'll try to find it.

Walt

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

"T_Graziani" <
href="mailto:tonygraziani@hotmail.com">tonygraziani@hotmail.com> wrote
in message
href="news:f13fd27.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f13fd27.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

My
company designs electronic equipment racks(communication systems), and the
cabling between them. There can be as many as a few thousand cables running
between all our pieces of equipment. We'd like to create Inventor models of
these cables, to do a better job of cable routing and to estimate cable
lengths for our mfg. folks. I'd appreciate any help with tips, tricks, and
techniques for routing cables. I'm familiar with the major IV reference
websites, and will certainly check them out. But, I would definitely
appreciate any help the IV community can give in moving forward. Thanks.

Tony

[Anonymous]

Yeah ... never go look at a customer installation
with anything in your stomach.

~Larry

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

"rllthomas" <
href="mailto:rllthomas@attbi.com">rllthomas@attbi.com> wrote in message

href="news:f13fd27.2@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f13fd27.2@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

Ah
come on you know those pesky customers route the cable everywhere BUT where
you intend, whats the point 🙂

Where do you work at?

Rich
Thomas

[rllthomas]

The pictures I have from customer installations are totally amazing. Shocking actually, makes you realize your product is only as good as how it is used as opposed to how it was intended to be used.

Rich Thomas

[T_Graziani]

The cables we'll be routing are all large bundles, but we're only going to model them as one entity. I feel pretty confident that I can set up datum points on cable hangers along my routing path, and sweep a protrusion through them. But here is my main concern. How do I prevent interference between cables when I route 50 of them through a series of cable hangers?

[Anonymous]

Based on what you're describing, I cooked up a
small assembly and posted it to the customer-files group.  It has
a group of cables extruded as one part routed between two manifolds, and
through several hangers.  The position of the hangers in the 'manifolds and
hangers' assembly should drive the routing of the cable; if you mess with the
hangers (or the manifolds), the cable run should update.  This was a rush
job, and I didn't test it for stability, but I know I've done clean versions of
this in the past.

When I layed out the path for the cable run, I did
it in 2D sections, based on what I figured would give me a clean run through
that section.  The sweep command found the entire path at once without
making my create a 3D path, which was nice.  The run came out exactly
how I wanted it.

Cheers,

Walt

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

"T_Graziani" <
href="mailto:tonygraziani@hotmail.com">tonygraziani@hotmail.com> wrote
in message
href="news:f13fd27.6@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f13fd27.6@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

The
cables we'll be routing are all large bundles, but we're only going to model
them as one entity. I feel pretty confident that I can set up datum points on
cable hangers along my routing path, and sweep a protrusion through them. But
here is my main concern. How do I prevent interference between cables when I
route 50 of them through a series of cable hangers?