Harness Entry

Now reading version 15.1. For the latest, read: Harness Entry for version 17.1
Applies to Altium Designer versions: 15.1, 16.0, 16.1 and 17.0

The Harness Entry dialog.

The Harness Entry dialog.

Summary

This dialog allows the designer to specify the properties of a Harness Entry object. 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.

For information on how a placed sheet entry object can be modified graphically, directly in the workspace, see Graphical Editing.

Access

The Harness Entry dialog can be accessed prior to entering placement mode, from the Schematic – Default Primitives page of the Preferences dialog. This allows the default properties for the harness entry object to be changed, which will be applied when placing subsequent harness entries.

During placement, the dialog can be accessed 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).

While attributes can be modified during placement, bear in mind that these will become the default settings for further placement unless the Permanent option on the Schematic – Default Primitives page of the Preferences dialog is enabled. When this option is enabled, changes made will affect only the object being placed and subsequent objects placed during the same placement session.

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.
  • Using the Edit » Change command and clicking once over the placed harness entry object.

Options/Controls

  • Text Color - click the color sample to change the text color for the harness entry, using the standard Choose Color dialog.
  • Text Style - use this field to determine how the text for the harness entry is displayed, when bus syntax is used. Choose from the following options:
    • Full - choose this option to display the net identifier information in full. For example the N[0..7] net identifier string will be shown as N[0..7].
    • Prefix - choose this option to display only the prefix of the net identifier, ignoring the bracketed portion. For example the N[0..7] net identifier string will be shown as N.
  • Text Font - this control serves two purposes. Firstly, it reflects the currently chosen font for the text in terms of Font Name, Font Size and Font Style. Secondly, when clicked it provides access to the standard Font dialog, from where to change the font as required.
Effects are also displayed when enabled (Strikeout, Underline). If Regular is used for the font's style, this will not be displayed visually in the control's string.

Properties

  • Name - the current name of the harness entry. This name uniquely identifies this harness entry within its parent harness connector. All entries withn the same harness connector must be unique.
Should you need to negate (include a bar over the top of) the harness entry name, include a backslash character after each character in the name (e.g. E\N\A\B\L\E\). Alternatively, enable the Single '\' Negation option on the Schematic- Graphical Editing page of the Preferences dialog, then include one backslash character at the start of the name (e.g. \ENABLE).
  • Position - the current position of the harness entry in relation to the top of the harness connector. Enter a greater value to move the harness entry further down.
  • Harness Type - this field is used to specify a Harness Type for a particular signal harness system in the design. It is typically left blank when a wire or bus is connected to the harness entry, used only when another signal harness itself is connected. The Harness Type itself is defined either manually in the associated Harness Definition File, or as part of the properties of a Harness Connector. The associated drop-down lists all currently defined Harness Types detected across the source schematic documents of the active project.
When the harness entry is physically connected to another signal harness (facilitating nested signal harnesses) it will automatically inherit that harness's type. The Harness Type field will populate with that harness's type, and become read-only.
  • Locked - enable this option to protect the harness entry from being edited graphically.
If attempting to graphically modify an object that has its Locked property enabled, a dialog will appear asking for confirmation to proceed with the edit. If the Protect Locked Objects option is enabled on the Schematic – Graphical Editing page of the Preferences dialog, and the Locked option for that design object is enabled as well, then that object cannot be selected or graphically edited. Double click on the locked object directly and disable the Locked property, or disable the Protect Locked Objects option, to graphically edit the object.

 

Note

The features available depend on your level of Altium Designer Software Subscription.