Enterprise Harness for SOLIDWORKS

Enterprise Harness runs in a separate application window and doesn’t require a SOLIDWORKS license for the user building the 3D harness. However, it maintains associative connections to the SOLIDWORKS model so that the harness can be built in parallel to the main mechanical hardware design making it so that updates to either the mechanical or the electrical systems can easily be handled.

Enterprise Harness is available both as a standalone license locked to a specific user’s computer, or as a network license shared among design team members at a slightly higher price. It is typically sold as a perpetual license with an annual subscription fee that includes technical support and product upgrades.

SOLIDWORKS Routing, which is part of SOLIDWORKS Premium, is a tool used to route a variety of infrastructure systems within the SOLIDWORKS CAD environment – piping, tubing, point-to-point wiring, and branched harnesses. However, many who try SOLIDWORKS Routing for branched harnesses and cables report two main challenges: that the 3D CAD engine behind SOLIDWORKS can struggle with the complexity of the wires in a typical harness, and users need a strong understanding of mechanical CAD. Enterprise Harness addresses both problems, by performing the modeling tasks in a dedicated harnessing environment with a lighter memory footprint, that doesn’t require any prior 3D CAD knowledge.

Designing a harness in 3D requires inputs from two angles: the spatial organization of the connectors the harness needs to connect and a summary of the electrical connections that need to be made. In general, the 3D model that harness needs to be designed for would be provided as a SOLIDWORKS file and can be captured with a single-click in the SOLIDWORKS interface. The electrical connections are supplied as a from/to list as a .CSV file. This could be a report saved from a schematic tool like SOLIDWORKS Electrical, or an Excel file created from scratch.

Enterprise Harness will produce two key outputs. The first is a 3D model of the completed harness, created as a native SOLIDWORKS model within the original SOLIDWORKS file. The second is an exchange file that captures the details of the harness to be represented as a 2D drawing. This drawing would be created in Enterprise Harness’ sister software, Enterprise Layout.

Enterprise Harness has specifically been designed so that no prior 3D CAD experience is required. It has simple controls and direct manipulation tools to get exactly the paths and connections you want. Harness design is often tackled by designers from both electrical and mechanical backgrounds, so it’s critical that the design tool allows all types of users to complete the task.

Changes to the electrical system can be captured by reimporting the from/to list and letting the design update. Changes to the mechanical layout can easily be captured by exchanging the updated model to the Enterprise Harness software and adjusting the wire routes accordingly.

Modelling harnesses in 3D lets you easily create 2D documentation for manufacturing, get accurate lengths of wires, and ensures adequate space and paths are provided in the hardware design to accommodate the wires. Additionally, being able to visually see the wires in the 3D model can have huge benefits for other design collaborators, for sharing visuals with customers, and for the manufacturing floor to visualize what is needed.

We recommend a specific set of steps to get your organization up and running with Enterprise Harness and modeling harnesses in 3D. After installing the software, our Flight Plan service will walk you through training on the standard workflows in the software. We’ll then help you build an initial library, then work through the process of creating your first harnessing project.