Cable Harness Connector and Terminal Shapes

[laesx]

Does anyone know where I can find wire and cable harness connector shapes?  Visio 2007 has a very limited amount of connectors (ie d-sub connector) and I would like to start building a library of the various common connectors from mfg.'s like AMP/Tyco, Molex, Deutch etc.

[aledlund]

check john marshall's site (visio.mvps.org) and www.visiocafe.com, of course there are always the vendor sites. I use the altima stuff, but it isn't free.
al

[ekb]

Hi laesx,

One technique that I use is to grab a 2d image of the connector that I am interested in from the manufacturer and create a line end by tracing the connector.   Attached is a drawing that contains a bunch of connectors that I have done that may be helpful. 

Eric

[qw12]

Hi Eric,

Really nice example of a harness drawing!
One question: How do you create a cable, like  the second one?
When I drag it around a control handle, it resize really nice. I can also add a control handle to it, and resizing on this one looks great.
Do you have any links to a tutorial, how to make this types of shapes?


best regards
rl

[edit:typo]

[Lars-Erik]

The tracing part is explained by Visguy on his blog:
http://www.visguy.com/2008/04/16/importing-images-as-backgrounds-for-tracing/

[ekb]

Hi RL,

The harness cable is an example of a custom line pattern.  On the Visio menu, select View->Drawing Explorerer->Line Patterns->Convolute to see how this line pattern was constructed. First right click and select Pattern Properties.  Notice the Behavior selection and that the pattern is unscaled.  This will cause the pattern to replicate and bend nicely.  Next, double click the line pattern to open it up.  The construction is very simple:  two different sized rectangles.   One trick to doing line patterns is to make the page size for the pattern fit your pattern very tightly.  Line patterns and line ends are very powerful tools to making great harness drawings that look and behave nicely.

Eric

[Visio Guy]

Hi Folks,

For more info about creating custom line patterns, check these two articles out:

• Release the Power of Visio Custom Line Patterns
• Bubble Revision Shapes

[qw12]

Hi all,
Thanks for your hints and links. I'll look into this.
regards
rl

[qw12]

Hi RL,

The harness cable is an example of a custom line pattern.  On the Visio menu, select View->Drawing Explorerer->Line Patterns->Convolute to see how this line pattern was constructed. First right click and select Pattern Properties.  Notice the Behavior selection and that the pattern is unscaled.  This will cause the pattern to replicate and bend nicely.  Next, double click the line pattern to open it up.  The construction is very simple:  two different sized rectangles.   One trick to doing line patterns is to make the page size for the pattern fit your pattern very tightly.  Line patterns and line ends are very powerful tools to making great harness drawings that look and behave nicely.

Eric

Ok, I've now found out the trick with the line patterns. Nice!
But with what line-tool did you draw the harness?
When I use the line tool or pencil tool the cable is somtimes "broken".

What I want is this:
two parallell lines, that I can resize, squeeze etc.
Any ideas?

Best regards
RL

[ekb]

Try rounding the corners from the Format->Line dialog (see example attached).

[qw12]

Try rounding the corners from the Format->Line dialog (see example attached).

Thanks, it looks better. But I have the impression that the best result is acheived  by removing all vertices by converting the curve to splines (Tools->operations>Fit to curve).
But that is perhaps only imaginary.

Thanks for your kind help and samples!

rl