Best way to explore electric wire routing over a design ?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I'm designing a battery made of 18650 cells.

The cells have now a fixed position and the frame and clamps holding those cells are now also determined.

Now I need to explore the electric wiring of the cells and this step follows 2 goals:

1°) Find the most optimized path for the wires, which depends on the available room left on my frame holding the cells

2°) Determine the total wire length needed to achieve this wiring

To do that, it would be nice to be able to explore the possible paths as I would do it in real life:

- start the cable at point A (a pole of the cell), and this starting point will remain fixed as I continue wiring

- extend the cable to location B and again fix that point and continue wiring

- etc.

I would need to make the wire follow the existing structure shape for some segments of this wire (like following the curves of the cells for example).

I would also need to be able to remove previous fixed point of the wire path, for example when I want to explore a different path. This also means the wire should straighten back if I remove a point before which the wire was constrained to follow the existing structure's shape.

I have looked at some tutorials about creating wires in fusion360 but I'm still not sure what tools I should use to achieve the wiring exploration as described above.

How would you do that ?

From the tutorials I have looked at it seems you need to "think the shape of your wire beforehand", while I would prefer to create a given length of cable in the first place and only then begin routing its path and fusion360 would make the wire bending in realtime according to the last fixed position I have set (and we could imagine a max bending radius parameter here), or also bend the wire automatically if I ask to follow the shape of existing structure, and unbend the wire if I decide to drag the wire away. Is it possible ?

[jhackney1972]

I know I am responding to a very old thread but I feel it is important to be sure everyone who needs to measure the length of connected lines and arcs, that are not created as a spline, know the process.