Connector Drawings

A Connector Drawing is a to-scale outline of a connector housing, seen from the top or from the side, with its detail lines and coloured materials such as seals and secondary locks (TPAs). On the Layout view, a connector whose part has drawings is drawn as its drawing instead of the connector symbol, so the layout looks like the harness on the bench.

Drawings come with the connector part. Connectors added from the Parts Catalog bring their drawings with them, and a connector part you created yourself can borrow drawings from the catalog. The drawings are stored with the part, so they follow it into part libraries, local .harness files and the PDF export.

Choosing Top or Side Drawings

Open Main Menu → Harness settings → Layout and choose how Connectors are drawn:

• Symbol - every connector is drawn as the connector symbol.
• Top drawing - connectors are drawn from the top. This is the default.
• Side drawing - connectors are drawn from the side.

A connector whose part has only one of the two drawings uses the one it has. A connector with no part, or whose part has no drawings, is still drawn as the symbol.

The choice is saved with the harness, so everyone who opens it, including viewers of a shared or embedded harness, sees it the same way, and the PDF export follows it. A new harness starts from the choice you last made. The setting can’t be changed while the harness is read-only.

Drawings on the Layout

Drawings are drawn to scale, at the same scale as bundles drawn at their estimated thickness, or at the formboard’s scale in formboard mode. They take the part’s Color, and each material, such as a seal or a TPA, is drawn in its own colour, detail lines included. With Draw components in their part colour turned off in the same settings tab, drawings are grey.

The mating face sits on the front of the connector, where the symbol’s mating face is, and the drawing reaches back towards the bundle:

• The bundle meets the drawing at the back, where the wires leave the housing, and the connector’s internal wires start there too.
• Mated connectors meet face to face, so turning drawings on or off never pushes a mated pair into each other.
• A side drawing stays the right way up when the connector faces left.
• The connector’s label moves clear of the drawing.

To connect a new bundle or mate, drop it anywhere on the drawing. When search or a highlight dims a drawn connector, it fades to a faint silhouette, like a dimmed symbol.

Drawings in the Part Details

A connector part with drawings shows its top and side drawings next to its pinout in its details, labelled Top and Side and drawn in the part’s colour. Catalog connectors show them in the Parts Catalog’s part details too.

Assigning Drawings to Your Own Part

A connector part you created yourself has no drawings to start with. Open its details and click Assign drawings from catalog, next to the pinout, to open the Assign Drawings window.

Search by the name of the part a drawing was made from, its manufacturer, or the part number of a catalog connector that uses it, and narrow the list with the cavities: and manufacturer: filters. The search starts filtered to your part’s number of cavities, but unlike a pinout, a drawing shows only the housing’s body, so you can remove the filter to use a drawing from a housing of another size. Each result shows its top and side drawings in your part’s colour, its number of cavities and the catalog parts that use it. Click Assign to give that drawing to your part. Assigning drawings doesn’t change the part in any other way.

To swap the drawings, click them in the part’s details (Click to replace drawings) and pick others. To remove them, hover the drawings and click Remove drawings. This works on parts added from the catalog too; updating a part from the catalog puts the catalog’s drawings back.

Export

Drawn connectors are drawn the same way on the Layout page of the PDF export and on the Formboard Panels: to scale, in the part’s colour, and with bundles meeting them at the back.