Suggested Technique for Flattening a Cabling Harness

Procedure

1. Pro/HARNESS-MFG provides powerful tools for creating manufacturing data used in the
production of electrical wire and cable harnesses. The following example will demonstrate
how to flatten a 3-D harness and create a nail board drawing with a from-to wire list. This
example will use the previously created cabling assembly shown below in Figure 1. Refer to
the Suggested Technique for Routing Cables in an Assembly to create this cabling
assembly.

Figure 1

2. To create a flattened harness assembly of the cabling assembly shown above, select File,
New from the pulldown menu. Then, select Manufacturing and Harness from the NEW
dialog box, as shown in Figure 2. The name of the manufacturing model should be entered at
the bottom of this dialog box. Then, select OK.
 Figure 2

3. When prompted for the reference harness name, select the name of the harness part that was
created in the cabling assembly. Then, enter a name for the flattened harness assembly. The
main window will now contain a set of default datum planes and a coordinate system, and a
new window will appear with the reference harness part. The harness will be detached from
the cabling assembly in 3-D space. Select Flatten from the CABLE MFG menu, and pick
Lay Out. With Set Start Pnt highlighted, select the location on the reference harness to lay
out cables from, as shown in Figure 3. This start point will establish the origin of the flat
harness on the default assembly datum planes (see Figure 5).
 Figure 3

4. To flatten the harness, select Auto Fan from the LAY OUT menu and enter in a bend radius.
This will flatten all cables which are connected to the start point. This is shown below in
Figure 4. NOTE: It is not possible to flatten wires, in the same flattened harness assembly,
which do not share at least one common location with the wire whose location point was
selected as the start point. If this is the case, multiple flattened harness assemblies must be
created.

Figure 4
5. Move two of the cables to the right as shown in Figure 5 by selecting Move Segment from
the FLATTEN menu. Pick on one of the cable segments and drag it to the desired location.
Assemble the power supply by selecting Components from the FLATTEN menu, and then
Assemble. Pick the green location point that corresponds to the place where the cable
attaches to the connector. Select Orient from the PLACE menu, and pick the top of the
power supply and ADTM3. This will force the top of the power supply to face the same
direction as ADTM3. Repeat this procedure for the other three components. Alternatively,
selecting Assemble-All from the FLAT CONN menu will automatically assemble all
connectors.

Figure 5

6. Place the flattened harness assembly into a drawing. Select Views from the DRAWING
menu, and enter in the name of the flattened harness when prompted. This is the file with a
".asm" extension that which was created in Step 1. Add a view to the drawing.
 Figure 6

7. To place a from-to table in the drawing, Pro/REPORT is required. Select Table from the
DRAWING menu, and create the 2 x 5 table shown below in Figure 7. Pick Repeat Region
from the TABLE menu and select Add and Simple. When prompted to locate the corners of
the region, first pick the lower left cell, then the lower right. The harness has parameters
which will be utilized to construct this table. Select Enter Text and Report Sym and pick
in the lower left table cell. This column is for the name of the wire, or the "run." Pick
harn..., run..., and name to place this report symbol in the table. Repeat this information
for harn.run.from.conn.name, harn.run.to.conn.name, harn.run.len, and
harn.run.spool.name. For more information on Repeat Regions, refer to some of the
techniques demonstrated in Creating a 2D Repeat Region.

Figure 7
8. Select Repeat Region and Update Tables to show the values of the parameters that were
entered in Step 6. The result is shown below in Figure 8. The table cells can be toggled
between the parameter names and the parameter values by selecting Switch Syms from the
TBL REGIONS menu.

Figure 8