About Importing Conductors

Importing conductor lists from an .xml file lets you automatically insert conductors and conductor groups into your harness.

This page explains how information is retrieved from external data.

Note: If the unit of the attributes of the imported conductors is not specified in the .xml file, the unit used by default is MKS.

This page discusses:

See Also
Electrical Data Exchange Format
Selecting External Systems

Conductor End as Link between Conductor and Device

In the data exchange model, the conductor end is used as a link between the conductor and a device (connector, equipment, pin). This link relies on the Id attribute, which represents a unique identifier shared between ECAD and MCAD.

For more information about the data exchange format, see Electrical Data Exchange.

When importing conductors, CATIA queries the object that represents the conductor end. Two alternative exist:

The End is a Cavity

  • If the Id attribute is found in the 3D area session, the cavity is considered an end,
  • If the Id attribute is not found in the 3D area session, then, thanks to the connectivity information imported with the external data, the system queries for the parent object (a connector) and the connector is considered as the end.

    This means that, even if you decide not to create and map the cavity to 3D area devices, the system will be smart enough to take these devices as ends. The 3D area data may not go down to cavity level but the routing process can be performed.

  • If the Id attribute of the cavity and of its parent is not found, then the end is considered to be missing.

The End is a Device

  • If the Id attribute is found in the 3D area session, the device is considered an end,
  • If the end is missing, routing cannot be performed.
Important: If any of the conductor ends are missing (the status for missing ends is Missing in the conductor list), the import cannot be done for this conductor.

Note: Checks are also performed between conductor and electrical geometries to know where the conductors have to be created.

Conductor Group Import

A conductor group is ready to be imported if all its constituent conductors and conductor groups are ready for importing. This means in particular that all ends of constituent conductors are correctly mapped.