Inventor 2018 – Wire/Cable Length Tolerancing

By Miles Nicholson 

Wire, cable, ribbon cable or segment length in an electrical harness assembly is the basic length of an object depending on its position within the harness assembly. With wires, for example, the length is calculated as the distance from pin to pin based on the path the wire takes as it is routed through the harness segments. Other factors also contribute to the overall length and these factors cause adjustments to the original length.

There are several factors that cause adjustments to the original length of wires, cables, ribbon cables and segments in a harness assembly. These values are optional and are set as properties and harness settings (shown below).

For each harness segment, a service loop can be applied:

Embedded Lengths in Parts:

Embedded length property is used to adjust calculated wire lengths when it is used on parts, splices and pins. It could be the strip length of a wire going into a pin as an example.

You can set Embedded Length as a custom property on a part, splice or pin. The value can be set at either the definition (library) or occurrence (part) level.

Note: Both positive and negative embedded length values are allowed for splices.

 To set this value, open a part up: