Using Designcenter NX with 3D Electrical Design

3D Electrical Design enables the embedding of the Capital Wiring Integrator tree objects and output panel into the Designcenter NX workbench allowing you to efficiently manage integration tasks.

When using Designcenter NX with 3D Electrical Design there are a number of 3D modelling activities happening on the NX side in Designcenter using the routing capabilities of System Designer to create standard 3D harness models. In parallel the Capital functionality can be utilized to create the platform level wiring routing, using the 3D harness assemblies authored in Designcenter.

The great benefit here is that you do not have to wait for all the harnesses in a design to be completely modeled. You can kick off your electrical design activities with just one harness and build the connectivity iteratively as more and more harness models are created.

The number of signals and wires will, obviously, be impacted by how many harness are added, as well as the number of inline connectors between them. However the functionality enables you to get an early start in creating your design flow.

In essence you can commence your design tasks as soon as you have one harness, then add, or even removes harnesses as required. Constantly refreshing your data throughout the task.

Note

The co-design data exchange process, including Designcenter, is run in Teamcenter managed mode. Teamcenter manages and controls all the actual design data. You must have a Teamcenter account and be logged in to it prior to embarking on design activities as all data is served from, and saved back to Teamcenter.

Figure 1: 3D Electrical High Level Process Flow

The diagram above shows a simplistic high level flow for the 3D Electrical Design process. The top stream details the 3D harness modeling aspects, while the lower stream demonstrates the integrated co-design electro-mechanical capabilities enabling such activities as project selection, harness alignment and wire association and routing.

Once you have logged in to Teamcenter and authentication is complete Designcenter will load. A Teamcenter icon is visible indicating that this session is essentially an Teamcenter Active Workspace browser embedded within Designcenter NX.

You can use Designcenter to create your 3D harness models. Once a harness is created and submitted (saved) back to Teamcenter an .XML file in native Capital Harness .XML format is also automatically saved to the project and attached as a dataset. This .XML is then used to exchange information with Capital and is dynamically updated every time the harness assembly model is re-submitted or saved back into Teamcenter.

Multiple harnesses can be created and added throughout the design lifecycle process by both single users and teams of harness design engineers and each of these harnesses, and their accompanying .XML datasets will be saved in Teamcenter. The key reason being that by managing the data within Teamcenter the system can retrieve updated harness information and exchange it automatically with Capital. You do not need to have Designcenter NX open.

Moving to the lower section of the flow - the electro-mechanical co-design integration capabilities; here again Teamcenter is the master repository for the design information.

The Capital add-on application is embedded within the Designcenter NX toolbox. Once Teamcenter login authentication is complete and launched a Capital menu becomes available. You must first select an electrical project that will be used as the context for the association with the mechanical content of the 3D harness model.

Once your project is selected you can add single or multiple harnesses to it. You may select the harness manually or use the automated scan whereby the system scans the assembly structures and adds relevant files to your project's electrical context. Once all required harnesses are in your project and submitted to Teamcenter this automatically initiates the synchronization with Capital. The harnesses remain associated with the project and can be managed in future sessions of Designcenter as necessary.

Once all the project data has been synchronized the harnesses will be visible in the embedded Capital Design Browser. The management and updating of the harnesses is controlled by timestamps on the .XML datasets. As well as the addition and removal of harnesses from the design, inline connectors and hookups are also dynamically updated and this is all handled in the background and achieved using existing Naming Convention matching. If a new harness is added it will be connected automatically. Similarly if a harness is removed then its inline hookups will also go.

Cross probing and highlighting is supported between the mechanical and electrical content of the harness. Selecting an object on one window will highlight the same object on the other. When creating connectivity within platforms you can select build lists or individual designs and Capital determines the optimum routing pathways based on any pre-defined rules and constraints. Once again cross-probing is supported. However you should note that wiring only "exists" in Capital.

Parent Topic:

Introduction to 3D Electrical Design

3D Electrical Design User Guide, 2512.2606

Unpublished work. © 2026 Siemens