Consider using an auto-wire harness drawing template when designing a car-wiring harness project to give you a starting point.
Creating a car wiring harness project is challenging because these harness bundles are incredibly complex.
There are various design software in the market for creating these layouts, but the import process to get these templates into your project is almost similar.
However, the templates can vary, so let’s look at the electrical distribution system and wiring harness basics in vehicles.
Table of Contents
- What Are Auto Wire Harness Drawing Templates?
- Auto Wire Harness Drawing Template Types
- Best Design Software to Create or Import Car Wire Harness Drawing Templates
- Wrap Up
What Are Auto Wire Harness Drawing Templates?
A template is an already-made system or method that others can use. In this case, car wire harness drawing templates are documents with the basic details included and ready for modification or customization.
Auto Wire Harness Drawing Template Types
These electrical harness templates come in different types to match the basics of a vehicle’s power distribution system. They include the following.
Electrical Distribution System (EDS)
This system encompasses the vehicle’s logical and physical architecture, wiring harness component design, power distribution, and electrical circuit wires.
Therefore, it runs from the front end to the rear end of the vehicle because it covers almost everything.
On the physical aspect, the EDS covers the installation location of the wires and electronic components in the vehicle and their connections.
An engineering drawing for a wire harness
The other part covers the logical connectivity between the various car parts and highlights the computer or electrical controller unit for these components.
E&E Architecture
This E&E (Electrical and electronic) architecture also highlights the logical connectivity in the circuit but at a high level. It represents the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus between the electrical components, systems, and sub-systems.
Logical Schematics
A logical schematic takes the E&E architecture to a more advanced level. It is a detailed logical connectivity diagram that only defines the electrical connections between car components and the controls of systems and subsystems.
Electrical Schematics
This cable harness drawing further defines the logical schematic design details and indicates the following.
An electrical schematic
- Fusing distribution
- Individual wire gauge
- Component specification
- Wire color
- Circuit number
- Connector designation number
- Harness design primary input
- System electrical core design end-result
- Grounding distribution
- Control device number
- Interconnects
- Pin-to-pin connectivity
- Wire type
Wiring Harness Topology
This drawing template splits the wiring harness design into different pieces to optimize the layout for maximum cost-effectiveness, best manufacturability, and easy serviceability.
A complex car wire harness
Wiring Harness Routing
A wire harness routing template indicates the best or desired path for placing the harness bundle around the vehicle. When routing these wires, you must consider the vehicle environment, industry best practices, and design rules.
Electrical Wire Harness Packaging
The last template type is packaging, a mounting or fixing strategy of the routing diagram that ensures the bundle’s durability, reliability, and safety. Consider the industry’s best practices and design rules when packaging these bundles.
Wire harness assembly with a terminal and connector housing
Best Design Software to Create or Import Car Wire Harness Drawing Templates
Draw.IO
Although not purposely made for car wire harness design, Draw.IO is a free tool. The software has limited design features but might be the best if you’re in the market for a cost-effective design drawing solution for your project.
RapidHarness
RapidHarness is a full-lifecycle CAD solution made for designing production-ready wiring harnesses. The software can incorporate teams of any size, meaning you can import templates or partially complete projects from your colleagues.
Other features include a bill of materials, a built-in part database, an auto-generated wiring table, and a design rule checker.
Microsoft Visio
Most people don’t use Visio for wiring harness design projects, but it has multiple engineering templates. You can find them under File>New>Engineering Templates, from where you can select either of the following.
- Basic electrical
- Fluid power
- Parts and assembly drawing
- Systems
- Circuits and logic
- Industrial control systems
A wire harness engineering drawing
The software also allows you to select between US and metric units.
HarnWare
HarnWare comes with a database of over 100,000 templates to enable you to draw on the experience of the company’s designers to produce the following.
- High-quality wiring harness assembly drawings
- Wiring schematics
- Parts list
- Full manufacturing documentation
Wrap Up
Whether you are a first-time or experienced car wire harness designer, you can’t do without auto wire harness drawing templates because they give you a starting point to actualize your design.
These drawings come in different types, so you should consider using electrical design software with as many templates as possible that come with the package to make the work easier.
The premium applications listed above are your best bet, but you can also check out the free version if you are on a budget.
You can learn more about the auto-wire harness design process in this article, and leave your feedback in the comments below.
