Managing Wire Harnesses and Cable Units

Wire harnesses and cable units can be managed via the respective definition. The wire harness definition identifies the wire harness and contains all the relevant data of the wire harness as well as the parts of the wire harness. Analog to this, the cable unit definition identifies the cable unit.

Editing wire harness and cable unit data

The properties of wire harnesses or cable units can be edited at different points:

In the dialog Properties <...> you can edit the data for the selected wire harness or the selected cable unit. The most important properties are entered in the fields in the upper section of the first tab (for example the wire harness name or the DT in the Wire harness tab). In addition to the device tag, a wire harness is identified by the wire harness name, a cable unit by the cable unit name.
The wire harness navigator (dialog Wire harness - <Project name>) provides you with an overview of all the wire harnesses and cable units of the opened project. Here you can select single or multiple wire harnesses, single or multiple cable units or the components contained in the wire harnesses or cable units. Through the popup menu you can generate wire harnesses or cable units or call up the corresponding dialogs for editing them.

Assigning functions and connections to a wire harness or a cable unit

The assignment of functions and connections to a specific wire harness is carried out via the property Wire harness name (ID 31143). The assignment of functions and connections to a specific cable unit is carried out via the property Cable unit name (ID 31162).

Enter the wire harness name or the cable unit name for the respective property in the property table of the objects. In the navigators that display wire harness or cable unit data, you can use the Wire harness name property and/or the Cable unit name property as a filter criterion and display it as a column in the list view.

Through editing in tables you can assign or change a wire harness name or cable unit name rapidly and easily for selected functions and/or connections.

Parts

The part of a wire harness assembly can be entered at the wire harness definition in the first line of the Parts tab. The further lines of this tab are provided for parts (up to a maximum of 999) for which no corresponding EPLAN functions are available by default.
The part of a cable unit assembly can be entered analog at the cable unit definition in the first line of the Parts tab.

The creation of a wire harness assembly or a cable unit assembly in the parts management is not mandatory. It is also possible to store parts only at the individual components of a wire harness or a cable unit (connections, cables, pins, etc.) during designing.

Reports

The parts data of the wire harnesses or cable units contained in a project can be listed in the bill of materials and can be output in the corresponding reports (for example parts list, summarized parts list, etc.). You can specify in the dialog Settings: Parts whether only the wire harness / cable unit assembly parts or/and the parts of the wire harness / cable unit components are to be taken into consideration.

The following points are to be considered:

The Wire harness assembly parts setting takes into consideration those parts that are entered in the property dialog of a wire harness definition or a cable unit definition in the first line of the Part tab. This can be an assembly part in the parts management, but does not have to be.
The Wire harness component part setting takes into consideration the parts of the wire harness components and the cable unit components. These are, on the one hand, parts at main functions at which an existing wire harness name is entered for the property Wire harness name (ID 31143) or an existing cable unit name is entered for the property Cable unit name (ID 31162) in the property dialog. And on the other hand these are further parts at the wire harness definition and / or at the cable unit definition (in the property dialog in lines 2-1000).
In the dialog Settings: Parts the settings for the wire harnesses and cable units are logically AND-combined with the other settings options. For example in order to output a cable as a component of a wire harness you have to activate the Wire harness component part check box as well as the Cable part check box.

The parts data of the wire harnesses and the cable units can also be taken into consideration when outputting manufacturing data / labeling. Analog setting options as for the parts reports are available in the Settings tab of the dialog Settings: Manufacturing data export / labeling.