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Mentor Graphics adds harness design package

Electrical harness design and engineering is a challenging task because of the number of different harnesses needed to cover the range of engines and equipment levels on every vehicle model, complicated further by provision for optional equipment.

Mentor Graphics, which already supplies electrical system design tools used by OEMs and tier one suppliers, has added a new module for harness design, Capital HarnessXC.

The software allows for the controlled flow of information into the harness design process. It addresses the problem of managing design changes efficiently, so that there is no repetition of work, less manual input and so fewer errors.

Nick Smith, product director for Mentor Graphics integrated electrical systems division, said: “It is possible to set up policies that control how the application responds to design changes originating from various sources, such as from an electrical design tool such as Capital Integrator, from a mechanical design tool, or from within Capital HarnessXC itself.

“In essence it assigns granular change authority within the design. Control can be very detailed: policies can be applied to harness objects and to harness object attributes. This provides a very robust mechanism for propagating design change while preserving previous value-add design work.”

The system can take data from leading MCAD packages such as Catia V5 and Unigraphics NX – harness lengths, for example – and can convert information held in 3D models down to 2D. Component and symbol libraries, management infrastructure and data reporting are common to other Mentor Graphics applications.

The output is harness designs that include all information needed to manufacture the harnesses – including details not defined elsewhere such as spot tape placement – as part of a fully specified bill of materials. As such, each harness – and there could be many thousands – can be fully costed down to the last cent.

Graphical output can be configured to produce multiple variants of the same harness information in different styles and formats, useful if suppliers and end users apply different drawing standards.