Terminal usage

A harness design may include wires that terminate with a lug that is attached directly to a device. Examples of such devices are batteries with poles (such as a car battery) and terminal blocks with screws that hold the lugs.

Lugs are of different types, but a common type is an eyelet crimped onto the wire.

Lug qualification

Qualify a lug component as a connector. A typical connector has many connection points (pins) whereas a lug only has one or two. Define a multi port in the lug component to which a path may be connected and create one or two virtual ports as needed. You can add a Fitting Port to make adding the component easier by using the Place Part tool, if desired. A qualified eyelet lug has both a multi port for the wire connection and a fitting port for component placement.

Lug placement

You can place a lug into the harness assembly using either Routing→Place Part or Assemblies→Add Component. If you define a fitting port for placement, Routing→Place Part should be used.

Typically, you can place several lugs onto a device such as a terminal block. There is no mechanism available for the electrical design system to pass information into Routing Electrical that specifies which lug attaches to which terminal of the terminal block — for example, three lugs placed onto a terminal block.

Each lug has a unique identifier defined in the component list. Through the Electrical Component Navigator, you must assign these designators in order to route the wires. The problem is determining which identifier to assign to which lug, since the ports of a device are not uniquely identified — the system cannot automatically make these assignments.

There are different ways to resolve this problem:

• Have comments provided within the component list that indicate the position of each designator (e.g., "This lug goes to terminal block 2 slot 3").
• Have an attribute or name assigned to each port of the terminal block (e.g., SLOT = "J72A") that can be reconciled with the Unique ID from the component list by the designer.
• Devise other such methods according to a defined process.

Related topics

• Component List content for terminals