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Kalaslas , 03-11-2024, 07:04 PM

I'm experimenting with creating a Harness Wiring Diagram in Altium, but I'm running into issues immediately. I need to create the male connector components for my harness, and then I need to create a footprint for those connectors.

I'm not really sure what information I should put into that footprint, since it's not really a "footprint" at all. It's not a component that's supposed to be mounted on a PCB. I tried just putting the STEP file for the connector into the footprint, but then it complained that the pins on my schematic symbol weren't matched to any pads in my footprint, but I don't think I should add pads to the connector footprint, that makes no sense at all to me.

How do you create connectors for wiring harnesses?

QDrives , 03-12-2024, 03:19 PM

A footprint sounds weird for a wiring harness.
The word "footprint" does not appear in this documentation https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/harness-design

Mark , 05-02-2025, 02:54 PM

Just came across this post. Your connector "footprint" should just contain a 3dbody and a pad for each pin. The pads do not need to be in a particular position they will never be seen or serve any function other than to get past the compiler. The 3d body is extracted as a wire frame or 3d view for the wiring drawing.

Mark , 05-02-2025, 03:16 PM

*slight correction the copper will show up so put the pad as a resist layer.

Kalaslas , 05-07-2025, 08:12 AM

Thanks for the reply! I got a similar answer from the Altium Product Owner for the harness functionality. Super helpful guy, if you ever have any issues with harness design you can reach out to him at krishna.sundaram@altium.com, I think I've had 3-4 live sessions with him where he's helped me out with answering questions on how the harness design functionality works.

Kalaslas , 05-07-2025, 08:15 AM

I'm still a bit disappointed in the harness design functionality overall though, it seems very much "forced" into Altium Designer, and there's a lot of hacky solutions to make it work inside AD. I'm trying to use it to recreate the entire electrical architecture of my companies products, which involve 20-50 cables, 3-5 PCBs, and then a bunch of sensors, motors, fans and other electrical components, for each product, and I have to do so many hacky solutions to make it work, and there's a ton of stability issues that make AD crash for me now and then.

What's your experience with harness design in AD sofar?