About connectors and pins

Connectors

In Autodesk Inventor Cable and Harness, electrical parts such as connectors are standard Autodesk Inventor parts or iParts with one or more pins and extended properties. You can add the pins individually or as a group.

You can use generic connectors from the Content Center or author and publish your own. You can also place any non library connector in the assembly using the Place Component command.

Creating connectors

When you create connector parts you edit an existing Inventor part, switch to the Harness panel, and then add pin definitions and required properties. When the part is placed in an assembly, you add a unique identifier, or reference designator (RefDes), for the occurrence of that part. This completes the connector part definition in the context of the assembly.

If appropriate, additional properties specific to the electrical domain can also be added to the part and each pin. You can also set a place holder or generic value RefDes for the part before it is placed in a harness assembly.

Pins associated to existing model geometry update when the associated model geometry is changed. Non associative pins do not update. Because associative pins are created as regular work points, you can use the context menu to ground the work point.

Valid geometry for pin selections includes both associative and non associative points. Non associative points are arbitrary points on any face. Associative points include the following:

Modifying connectors

You can perform the following modification to connectors:

Note: When modifying pins using Redefine Feature, the geometry you can select differs from the selections available when the pin was first created. When redefining, you can place or project work points onto part faces, linear edges, or onto an arc or circle. Work points can also be constrained to the center points of arcs, circles, and ellipses.

Authoring custom connectors

After you create a custom connector and add the appropriate pins, you can use the Connector command to prepare the part for publishing to the Content Center Library. You can author and publish both a non iPart or an iPart as a connector. Once authored, you can publish the connector into the Content Center.

Placing and constraining connectors

When placing and constraining mating connectors for a harness assembly, keep the following information in mind: