Articles by Victor Villafane

The world is seeing technology advance at exponential rates. Products and devices are now more integrated than ever with intelligent electronic systems. This has presented challenges to engineering teams requiring them to combine both electrical and mechanical engineering disciplines. It becomes more apparent when designs incorporate electronic components, PCBs, bundles of wires, and wire harnesses.

The Challenges of Harness and Wire Design

Products and devices are becoming more portable in an effort to be competitive and reduce the overall waste footprint. Harness design has also become a large part of the design process and understanding things like space constraints, wire routes, and connector pin outs becomes an imperative part of the design process. Unfortunately, it also typically becomes the most manual part. Creating these deliverables for harness manufacturing is critical to meet project deadlines and go to market before competitors.

In today's 2D CAD environment, there is a plethora of choices and capable tools. AutoCAD has been a staple in 2D CAD for years, but with Autodesk's recent changes to their licensing models, it has become a tool that no longer offers versatile licensing options.

Not only did Autodesk eliminate perpetual licensing back in 2016, but over the last two years, they have slowly worked to phase out network licensing options, requiring any user that needs access to the software to have their own login. For many companies, this is not cost-effective because they do not work exclusively in 2D, so users are not working daily within the software.

For lighter AutoCAD users, Autodesk did introduce “flex” licensing, where companies can purchase tokens to pay only for days when they use the software. On the surface, this seems like a good compromise for light users, but companies need to pay close attention to their usage – the cost of daily tokens can add up quickly.

The pandemic has forced companies to look at more flexible software and licensing offerings to help enable their teams on executing their goals. At the same time, many are trying to reduce overhead costs. Collaboration, not just across teams and departments, but also across physical regions, has become a necessity in today’s workforce. Labor costs are rising, and IT overhead can become a challenge for all companies.