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:
- Existing work points.
- Center points on any circular component such as a face, a hole, and cylindrical cuts of arc edges.
- Existing sketch points.
- Model vertices.
Modifying connectors
You can perform the following modification to connectors:
- Add or modify electrical properties on both the parts and pins.
- Modify pins using standard work point operations (Ground, 3D Move/Rotate, Redefine Feature).
- Delete selected pins, including individual pins in a pin group.
- Delete all pins in a pin group.
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:
- When the connectors reside in the harness assembly, they can be constrained to objects in the top-level assembly only while editing the top level assembly. The connectors cannot be constrained while in-place editing the harness assembly.
- If you are unsure whether to place mating connectors as children of the top-level assembly or in the harness assembly in your initial design, place the connectors in the top-level assembly without constraints. Using this method, you can demote the connectors into the harness assembly before the harness is created without losing constraints. Any RefDes information added to a connector at the time they are demoted is lost and must be edited to reassign the RefDes in the harness. Any wires or cables attached to connectors at the time they are demoted dangle and must be edited to reassign the wires to the connector pins.
- Constraints placed in the harness assembly provide more flexibility for individual components within the harness to adapt to assembly changes. They do not adapt to changes as a rigid body. For example, with a top-level assembly, if you constrain to a subassembly, all the parts in the subassembly move as one rigid body. With a harness assembly, you can constrain all connectors in the subassembly to different locations and they will adapt independently of one another, they do not move as a rigid body.