Cable and Harness - Physical parts connection

[eddy_diaz]

Hi, I'm new to the Autodesk Community, been using Inventor for a while since College and now I'm using it at my job for mech. assemblies, welded structures and sheet metal design mainly. Recently we opted to start using it for harness drawings as well.

As the title suggests, I have a question regarding pin connections between physical parts (not cables going from one pin to another); let me be more clear with an example:

Is there a way for this ferrule to be connected to the terminal block and it to be shown in the nailboard view? I'd like the connector view to show both the ferrule and terminal block, but so far with this setup, only the ferrule which is crimped directly to the wire is shown.

The terminal block is in the top level mechanical assembly and the ferrules are in the harness assembly. I know if I place the terminal block in the harness assembly it will show up in the connector view but I'd like to keep it in the mechanical assembly and for it to be shown in the nailboard view but it's not possible if it's not connected to anything.

I do not want the uncrimped wire to go directly to the terminal block

I know this was kind of specific so I didn't know how to summarize everything in the title.

Hope someone can help or just say that it's straight up not possible, workarounds for this are welcome. Thank you everyone in advance!

[CGBenner]

@eddy_diaz 

Welcome to the forum, Eddy.  I'm reaching out to see if I can find someone who uses C&H to jump in and offer some advice.  Hopefully someone has some ideas for you.

[Schredhammer · Accepted solution]

Eddy, I don't think so (I've never used the nailboard because it doesn't match our manufacturing process), but you could insert a new view of the terminal block and move it over the ferrule so it looks like the wire is connected into it.

I would love to see Autodesk put some love into updating or adding more features of the Cable & Harness module. I've been using IV for 21 years and I don't recall there ever being any major updates.

[eddy_diaz]

I figured, it was worth the shot though. I think I'll stick to that "manual" workaround.

It would've been great if Inventor had that a feature like that so I could not only show the information of the ferrule/terminal but also the component pin that terminal goes connected to.

I know that the main purpose of this tool is not making wiring diagrams but I would love if it could do both diagrams and harnesses. Anyway, thank you very much!

[Schredhammer]

Eddy, something I did in a very large, complicated harness, is that in the instance properties of my ferrules/slip on terminals is I made a property titled "Tag", and I made the value of where that terminal is connected. So for example, we have a SPDT relay that is labelled KE2 on the wiring diagram, and each terminal on that relay has a number. So the instance property named "Tag" for one of the slip on wire terminals is "KE2:5". I wonder if it's possible pull that information from the harness data into the nailboard.

As for making wiring diagrams, it is possible to have Inventor and AutoCAD Electrical interoperability. We attempted it years ago but it seems to only work if your harness has no ferrules/slip ons and the wires connect directly your parts. 

[eddy_diaz]

Interesting, this could work with the "Display properties" button in the nailboard environment, however according to the documentation it only displays "Harness properties", I can add custom harness properties like "TAG_Elec" but I'm not sure how to make an expression that relates it to the instance properties. I attempted "=<TAG>" but it didn't work for me.

[Schredhammer]

Eddy, see this link on instance properties:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2025/ENU/?guid=GUID-87CB0EE4-0F7F-4804-B9E1-BEF76589BD3A 

[Maxim-CADman77]

Dear @eddy_diaz ,
You wrote "the ferrules are in the harness assembly".
Can you, please, describe the workflow to place ferrule in the harness assembly (or reference the help page that describes this)?
Thank you in advance.