Back in the day when I was a design engineer one of the more difficult things we had to keep track of were wire colors. Capital Harness Systems provides several mechanisms for automating this task.
When designing electrical systems, mostly for automotive designs, the color of each individual wire is very important. The color provides visual feedback for the technicians as to what system the circuit belongs to in order to facilitate troubleshooting problems. As a design engineer I spent many hours, days even, verifying that the color of every wire in my design was correct. A mistake could not only affect the manufacture of the cabling harness but also the ability for the vehicle to operate start or operate properly.
One way to drive the wire colors using CHS is to use Rules in Capital Logic. Here are some of the rules one can configure for your specific needs:
Preparing RecommendationsI will show an example of how to use one of these rule templates to ensure that any wire in my design that has a Signal name of PWR has a Wire Color of “R”:
First we configure the rule, apply it to the project, and run the rule:
This rule can be read as for a “Wire” set the attribute “Wire Color” to “R” if the “Signal” of the wire is equal to the value of “PWR”. One of the nice things about using rules in CHS is that using the templates one does not need to write “code” - to change Wire to Connector for instance one simply clicks on the word Wire and then when prompted with a list of objects select Connector (or any other object you desire). This makes it very easy to define your own rules for your own needs and helps drive consistency between experienced designers and inexperienced designers alike.
Once the rule is applied the attribute Wire Color for the wires that are part of the PWR signal group are changed to R as shown below:
I work for Mentor Graphics as an Applications Engineering Consultant working with the Capital Harness Systems tools focusing on Miltary and Aerospace markets.
I have a Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineer from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield Michigan. I recently completed a Master's of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Michigan while working full time at Mentor Graphics.
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