Connecting Hardware Objects by Dragging

From the hardware view, you can instantiate physical channel instances, connections, and ports using drag operation. This enables you to reuse physical channels like buses and wires for interconnecting EE components.

These scenarios describe how to connect an ECU. The scenarios are identical for actuators, sensors, electrical devices, and subsystems.

This task shows you how to:

Before you begin: Create ECUs. For more information, see Creating EE Components.
See Also
Drag-and-Drop Creations

Connect ECUs with Bus Instance

You can connect ECUs with a bus instance by dragging a bus reference onto selected ECUs or their ports.

Before you begin: Create a bus reference.
  1. Select the ECUs to be connected using Ctrl.

    Tip: You can also select ports instead of ECUs, in which case the connector types of the ports and the bus reference must be the same.

  2. From the Buses folder in the tree, select a bus reference.
  3. Drag the selected bus reference into the work area.

A bus instance is created and connected to the selected ECUs. Following components are generated after drag operation:

Component Name Component Type Description
Bus1.1: CAN [CAN] Bus Instance A bus instance is derived from the dragged bus reference.
Port_1: CAN [CAN] Port A compatible port on each selected ECU is generated with the same connector type as that of the connected bus instance.
Bus1.1A <-> ECU1.1 A/Port_1 [CAN] Connection A connection is generated to each selected ECU from the bus instance.

Connect ECUs with Wire Instance

You can connect ECUs with wire instances by dragging a wire reference onto selected ECUs or their ports.

Note: You can use a similar approach to connect switches with Ethernet segments.

Before you begin: Create a wire reference.
  1. Select the ECUs to be connected using Ctrl.

    Important: The order of ECU selection dictates the order of the created connections. To connect two ECUs, as shown in the following diagram, the ECU ECU1.1 must be selected before the ECU2.1 ECU.

    Tip: You can also select ports instead of ECUs, in which case the connector types of the ports and the wire reference must be the same.

  2. From the Wires folder in the tree, select a wire reference.
  3. Drag the selected wire reference into the work area.

The selected ECUs are connected with wire instances. Following components are generated after drag operation:

Component Name Component Type Description
wireRef.1: WireConnector [WiredLink] Wire Instance A wire instance is derived from the dragged wire reference. 
Port_1[In]: WireConnector [WiredLink]
Port_2[Out]: WireConnector [WiredLink]
 Ports For each selected ECU excluding the first and the last ECU, an In and Out port is generated with the same connector type as that of the connected wire instance.
Note: An Out port is generated on the first ECU and an In port on the last ECU.
wireRef.1 -> ECU1.1/Port_1[Out] [WireConnector] Connection A connection is generated to each port from a wire instance.