Creating a Manufacturing Drawing for a Harness Design in Altium Designer | Altium Designer 23 User Manual

Created: September 22, 2022 | Updated: March 17, 2023

Applies to Altium Designer version: 23

Contents

Creating a New Draftsman Document
Working with Views
Drawing Annotation and Dimensioning
Working with Tables
- Wiring List
- Connection Table
Draftsman Harness Document Templates

Note that Harness Design functionality is not supported with the Altium Designer Standard Subscription.

Once the wiring diagram and layout drawing are complete, read-only copies of their contents can be placed into the manufacturing drawing and annotated as required. A manufacturing drawing for a harness design is being created in the Draftsman editor.

For overview information about Draftsman, refer to the Streamlining Board Design Documentation with Draftsman page.

Creating a New Draftsman Document

To create a manufacturing drawing for the harness design, a new Draftsman document (*.HarDwf) should be added to the harness project. To do this, right-click the project entry in the Projects panel and then select Add New to Project » Draftsman Document from the context menu (or use the File » New » Draftsman Document command from the main menus).

Add a Draftsman document to the harness project from the Projects panel's right-click menu.

In the New Document dialog that opens, select an available Harness Document Template as required and ensure that a correct Project and harness layout drawing Document is selected.

The New Document dialog

A new Draftsman document will open in Altium Designer's design space. Options of a Draftsman document can be configured in the Properties panel in its Document Options mode, which is active when no object is selected in the document's design space. Refer to the Document Options section of the Setting Up a Draftsman Document page to learn more.

Once the Draftsman document has been created, any changes made in the wiring diagram or layout drawing can be imported into the Draftsman document using the Tools » Import Changes From <LayoutDrawing.LdrDoc> command from the main menus or the right-click menu of the design space. Not that despite the description in the menu command, this will import changes from both the wiring diagram and the layout drawing.

Working with Views

In a Draftsman document that is part of a harness design project, you can place read-only views of the harness wiring diagram and harness layout drawing included in this project.

Wiring Diagram View

A Wiring Diagram View is an automated graphic composite of the active harness design project's wiring diagram.

A Wiring Diagram View

A Wiring Diagram View is placed in a Draftsman document by clicking the button in the Active Bar or selecting the Place » Wiring Diagram View command from the main menus.

The properties of a placed Wiring Diagram View can be configured in the Properties panel when the view is selected in the design space.

The Properties panel in Wiring Diagram View mode

Layout Drawing View

A Layout Drawing View is an automated graphic composite of the active harness design project's layout drawing.

A Layout Drawing View

A Layout Drawing View is placed in a Draftsman document by clicking the button in the Active Bar or selecting the Place » Layout Drawing View command from the main menus.

The properties of a placed Layout Drawing View can be configured in the Properties panel when the view is selected in the design space.

The Properties panel in Layout Drawing View mode

Additional Views

To complete your manufacturing drawing, additional views can be used in the Draftsman document of your harness design project: Board Detail View and Component View.

The Board Detail View allows a defined area of an existing drawing that is a floating, magnified view of its detail. The Board Detail View is placed in a manufacturing drawing document by selecting an option from the button menu on the Active Bar or via the Place » Additional Views » Board Detail View menu options. Two options are available for the Detail View area.

An example circle area Board Detail View applied to a Wiring Diagram View

The Component View is a drawing view of a single component from the current harness design. The Board Detail View is placed in a manufacturing drawing document by the Place » Additional Views » Component View menu options.

An example Component View

Drawing Annotation and Dimensioning

Draftsman provides a range of additional annotation, dimensioning and drawing tools designed to add important information to a Draftsman drawing document. These include automated note and highlighting systems, as well as tools to indicate the lengths, sizes, and angles of the object outlines, or the distance between nominated objects.

An example of an annotated Layout Drawing View

Refer to the following pages to learn more:

Working with Tables

A Draftsman document of a harness project allows a Bill Of Materials (BOM), Wiring List, Connection Table, and a generic Table to be placed on the drawing. The tabular data is directly derived from the project files and provides a simple, visual way to convey crucial information for the harness manufacturing processes.

Refer to the Bill Of Materials and Table to learn more about working with these Draftsman table types.

Wiring List

A Draftsman Wiring List is an automatically generated table object that displays the start and end points and parameter values for each wire in the harness.

A Wiring List

To place a Wiring List, select the Place » Wiring List from the main menus or use the Wiring List command from the Active Bar.

Select the placed Wiring List to access its property settings in the Properties panel. This provides configuration options for most aspects of the Wiring List, including its visual attributes and data content.

The Properties panel in its WiringList mode (the General and Columns tabs)

Wire parameters (and their values) specified in the wiring diagram are reflected in the wiring list. An additional column is added to the wiring list for each wire parameter. These additional columns are hidden by default - use the visibility controls on the Columns tab of the Properties panel when the Wiring List is selected to show these columns in the design space (and hide the default columns if needed).

Currently, it is not possible to change the order of the rows. This issue will be addressed in a future update.

Connection Table

A Draftsman Connection Table is an automatically generated table object that shows the wires connected to every connection point (connector pin, splice, etc.) in the harness.

A Connection Table (for all components)

To place a Connection Table, select Place » Connection Table from the main menus or use the Connection Table command from the Active Bar.

Select the placed Connection Table to access its property settings in the Properties panel. This provides configuration options for most aspects of the Connection Table, including its visual attributes and data content. You can use the Component option to show the data of all project components in the table or the data of a specific component.

The Properties panel in its ConnectionTable mode (the General and Columns tabs)

Wire parameters (and their values) specified in the wiring diagram are reflected in the connection table. An additional column is added to the connection table for each wire parameter. These additional columns are hidden by default - use the visibility controls on the Columns tab of the Properties panel when the Connection Table is selected to show these columns in the design space (and hide the default columns if needed).

Currently, it is not possible to change the order of the rows. This issue will be addressed in a future update.

When any table object is copied from the Harness Draftsman document, its content can be pasted into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Draftsman Harness Document Templates

Draftsman Harness Document Templates define a Draftsman document's content and (optionally) its style properties. The template supports multi-page documents, data for the main document attributes (tables and lists, drawing types, etc.), and elements created by Draftsman that do not depend on the harness design content.

To save the current drawing document format as a Document Template, select the File » Save Copy As (or just Save As) command and choose Altium Draftsman Harness Document Templates (*.HarDot) from the Save dialog's Save as type selection filter. An existing drawing document's content and attributes, except those related to data extracted from the harness design, will be saved as a Harness Document Template. If the source drawing document has a specific page style (as might be applied by a Sheet Template) these graphical elements and attributes will be saved with the new Harness Document Template.

Any elements that are incompatible with the Document Template format will be removed. Before saving, an alert dialog will detail the pending action if incompatible elements exist.

A multi-page Draftsman document might typically contain wiring diagram and layout drawing views, connection and BOM tables, and wiring lists. When saved as a Harness Document Template, the data from the current harness design is retained to define a drawing content 'shell'.

When subsequently used as a template for a new Draftsman document, the project data is loaded into the shell in place of the template data, therefore, recreating the document format and its type of content.

For a custom Document Template to be available in the Templates area of the New Document dialog, it must have been saved in the Altium Designer installation's registered Local Templates folder. The location path can be viewed or changed in the Data Management - Templates page of the Preferences dialog.