Harness Entry

Modified by Jason Howie on Feb 19, 2015
Contents

Parent page: Schematic Objects

A placed Harness Entry.

Summary

A Harness Entry is an electrical design primitive that is placed within a Harness Connector. A Harness Entry is the connection point through which signals - through wires, buses, and other signal harnesses - are combined to form a higher level Signal Harness. Signal Harnesses enable the logical grouping of different signals for increased flexibility and streamlined design.

Availability

Harness Entries are available for placement in the Schematic Editor only, by clicking Home | Circuit Elements |  from the main menus.

Harness entries can also be managed in the following non-graphical ways:

  • Added/edited/removed as part of the Harness Connector definition, on the Harness Entries tab of the Harness Connector dialog.
  • Added/edited/removed as part of the textual harness connector definition, through a harness definition file (*.Harness). Such a defined harness connector can only be placed in the design using the Place » Harness » Predefined Harness Connector command, available from the Schematic Editor's right-click context menu.
Harness Connectors defined textually require the Locked; syntax. If the definition is not locked, the changes will not be saved as the software manages the Harness Definition Files automatically based on graphical instances of Harnesses.

Placement

After launching the command, the cursor will change to a cross-hair and you will enter harness entry placement mode. Placement is made by performing the following sequence of actions:

  1. Move the harness entry attached to the cursor over a placed harness connector on the sheet.
  2. Adjust the position of the harness entry in relation to the edge of the harness connector, opposite the connector's tip, then click or press Enter to anchor the harness entry, and complete placement.
  3. Continue placing further harness entries, or right-click or press Esc to exit placement mode.
The coloring of the harness entry will aid in its correct placement. While outside of a harness connector, the entry will appear greyed-out, and you will be prevented from placing. When over a harness connector, the entry will revert to its true coloring, as defined by its Text Color property, indicating it can validly be placed at that location.

While the harness entry is still floating on the cursor, and while it is within the bounds of a harness connector, press the Tab key to access an associated properties dialog, from where properties for the harness entry can be changed on-the-fly.

While attributes can be modified during placement (Tab to bring up associated properties dialog), bear in mind that these will become the default settings for further placement.

Graphical Editing

This method of editing allows you to select a placed harness entry object directly in the workspace and change its location graphically.

A selected Harness Entry.

  • Click and drag to reposition the harness entry vertically along the edge of its parent harness connector as required.
  • Hold Ctrl, then click and drag the harness entry to move it from the current harness connector to another harness connector on the sheet. Once the harness entry has cleared the boundary of the source harness connector, the Ctrl key can be released.
  • Clicking and dragging the sheet entry outside of the sheet symbol boundary will cause the sheet symbol to automatically resize to accommodate the entry's new location.
  • The name text for a harness entry object can be edited in-place by:
    1. Single-clicking the harness entry to select it.
    2. Single-clicking again (or pressing the Enter key) to enter the in-place editing mode. Sufficient time between each click should be given to ensure the software does not interpret the two single-clicks as one double-click (which would open the harness entry's properties dialog).
    3. To finish editing in-place text, press the Enter key, or use the mouse to click away from the harness entry.
Multiple harness entries can be moved simultaneously. First select all entries to be moved then, holding Ctrl, click on one entry in the selection, and drag the entire selection. Once you commence the drag, the Ctrl key can be released.

An object that has its Locked property enabled cannot be selected or graphically edited. Double click on the locked object directly and disable the Locked property, to graphically edit the object.

Non-Graphical Editing

The following methods of non-graphical editing are available:

Via an Associated Properties Dialog

Dialog page: Harness Entry

This method of editing uses the following dialog to modify the properties of a harness entry object.

The Harness Entry dialog.

The dialog can be accessed during placement by pressing the Tab key (while the harness entry is still floating on the cursor, and while it is within the bounds of a harness connector).

After placement, the dialog can be accessed in one of the following ways:

  • Double-clicking on the placed harness entry object.
  • Placing the cursor over the harness entry object, right-clicking and choosing Properties from the context menu.

Via the SCH Inspector Panel

Panel pages: SCH Inspector

The SCH Inspector panel enables the designer to interrogate and edit the properties of one or more design objects in the active document. Used in conjunction with the Find Similar Objects dialog, the panel can be used to make changes to multiple objects of the same kind, from one convenient location.

Notes

  1. A Harness Entry can be connected directly to a wire, a bus or a signal harness. The Harness Type field in the Harness Entry dialog is used when nesting signal harnesses. The field will auto-populate with the Harness Type of the connected signal harness.
  2. Should you need to negate (include a bar over the top of) a harness entry name, this can be done by including a backslash character after each character in the name (e.g. E\N\A\B\L\E\).

 

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