For those out there who have mastered electrical routing. Firstly congratulations, clearly you are an absolute genius.
I’m currently facing the arduous task of getting wires from connection point A to Connection point B.
The method I have discovered that almost works is; in assembly select connection Point A/right click / click Start Route – (Route properties box appears)under Electrical/ sub-type, click drop down select Cable/Wire set OD to 1.2mm. No clue what “Fix diameter” check box is for.
Question 1. What is fix diameter for
Next; click covering (properties box changes to Covering) under segments select Use covering library
Under Covering type drop down the only option is Tape
Question 2; is covering just that, a loom covering eg insulation tape or spiral rap? If so then wire or cable already has insulation.
So ignored covering as I just want individual wires so accept route properties, then Auto Route property manger appears. So uncheck orthogonal route because I want spines not lines and fillets
Under Selections the current selection box is highlighted blue indicating its waiting for me to select a point or something. This is where I’m confused the only connection point I am able to select is connection point A which now has a stalk and an active sketch line, so that is my from I cannot select my too connection point because it is not active.
In order to make my too connection point i.e. connection point B active I have to exit the Auto Route box and then right click the part with connection point B and select Add to Route in the pop up dialog box , the connection points then become active and get a wire stalk.
Question 3; what is the point of current selection box in the Auto Route property manager when you can only select the from connection point i.e. connection A?
I can now click the auto route in the command manager to open the Auto Route properties box and in Current selection select connection point A and connection point B.
Magically when I select connection point B on the second electrical part a beautiful spine sketch appears between the 2 points. My problem now is the spine is straight through the wall of the housing so I select the edit(drag) radio button in the Auto Route property manager to extend the spline but all that happens is the connection point sketch lines extend,the sline does not extend or stetch to where I want it, not the desired result.
So now my thinking is to edit the housing and create a sketch with points where I would like the wires (splines) to pass and create route points on those sketch points. So I’m thinking these will act like clips and I can attach the (wire) spline to them. Wrong that doesn’t work
Question 4; how do I create custom or maybe virtual clips to pass my wires through so I can track my wires down drilled holes and through cut out slots?
Have attached Assembly so you can see my scenario
Hey Colin,
Very sorry to say that my first thought on reading this post was "Exactly". The problem seems to be that SolidWorks has a process in mind that they never bother to explain to people. From my point of view, they seem to want you to drag and drop components rather than installing them beforehand. Once you get to the auto route view, you can drag in connectors and they automatically get added to the active connection list. Why they cannot allow you to click other connection points within this menu an add them is a mystery to me.
Once you have your first spline, right click and choose "Insert Spline Point". This gives you more degress of freedom to get the path you want. You can adjust locations and tangency from there.
I am just learning also so good luck! I still get cables that have diameters that have no relationship with anything I have input in the property dialogs (at the C points or in the routing options).