Capital Cable Router > Routing Rules

Cable Multipliers, Bundles,

and Groups

The BOM publish action in Capital Cabling Designer duplicates cables based on the Multiplier value, to populate multiple cables in the Teamcenter breakdown structure.

Typical multiple cable routing scenarios:

Multiplier — Specifies how many cables are associated, for example, cables with the same “From” and “To” ends. A cable with a Multiplier value is transformed into multiple cables in Teamcenter and Capital Cable Router.
Bundling — Specifies if cables are bundled when calculating the segment fill, for example, volume fills. Calculates whether the cable is packed into a bundle, for example, a trefoil with three cables.
Grouping — Specifies how cables are grouped based on a cable property in Capital Cabling Designer. Cables can be grouped together regardless of whether they are bundled together or not. You can specify a group leader cable on the Grouping attribute and the system will consider all cables with the same Group ID as part of the same group.

Figure 34: Example Cables from Electrical Design to Cable Routing

Grouping Cables

If you have defined a group of cables in Capital Cabling Designer, the whole group is considered for routing when you route the group leader cable using Automatic Cable Routing.

Similarly, if the following actions are run on the group leader when Submitting Cables for Auto Routing, the changes are inherited by the group members:

Copy a route from an existing route
Modify the Routing mode used to calculate the cable route

Routing Rules for Cables in a Group

Interactive Cable Routing does not consider groups and will only route the selected cable.

Typically, cables in a group share the same From and To devices. If a group member has different From or To devices, the Auto-Router will copy as much of the route from the group leader as possible. See also Usage Example – Automatic Routing Overwrites the From Node and To Node of Group Member Cables.

Rules and preferences specified on group members are ignored during automatic routing as the cables will follow the path and rules of the group leader.

If the group leader or any of the group members fail a routing request, the complete group will fail to route.

The following actions consider group members as individual cables irrespective of the grouping status:

Unrouting
Approving and unapproving
Releasing and unreleasing

Proper Groups

The following details define a Proper group:

All the cables in the group share the same From / To Device nodes.
The Group ID suffix {STRICT} indicates that the group of cables is a Proper group. Absence of the suffix indicates an Improper group.

For example, if the Group ID value is "Cable1 (1/5){STRICT}", the name of the first cable is Cable1 (group leader) and the group includes five group member cables. The suffix {STRICT} indicates this is a Proper group (all cables in the group have the same From / To Device nodes).

Improper Groups

The following details define an Improper group:

Not all cables in the group share the same From / To Device nodes.
All cables are displayed in the routing dialog boxes (Manage Routing Requests / Submit Cables for Auto Routing). Adding the group leader cable includes the group member cables to the lists in the dialog boxes. Group members are considered individual cables. The Auto-Router recognizes any rules / preferences specified on the group members.
Cables are routed (Accept, Reject, Resubmit) as individual cables and can pass or fail independently of each other.

For example, if the Group ID value is "Cable1 (1/5)", the name of the first cable is Cable1 (group leader) and the group includes five group member cables. The absence of {STRICT} indicates this is an Improper group (group members may have different From / To Device nodes).

Note

If the group leader and the group members share the same From and To Device nodes but the Segregation codes are different, the group is considered an Improper group.

Bundling Cables

The system calculates bundled cables in conjunction with existing single‑layer and multi‑layer Fill type calculations, including when segregation spacing rules are specified. A tray is nominated as single‑layer or multi‑layer, bundled cables are arranged in the tray, and then the system calculates all non-bundled cables in the tray.

The resulting non-bundled space usage is combined with the bundle size to calculate an overall volume fill % value. See also Segments.

The volume fill % value for a multi‑layer tray, where areas are used instead of widths, is calculated based on bundles occupy the full height of the tray.

Volume Fill Examples

The diagrams show various arrangements of different size bundles and non-bundled cables:

Figure 35: Trefoil, 6-Way Bundle, Single Layer

Figure 36: Trefoil, 12-Way Bundle, Multi‑Layer

Figure 37: Single, Paired, Trefoil, 6-Way Bundle, Single‑Layer

Parent Topic:

Routing Rules