WireViz: Wiring harness documentation tool

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davefiddes
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WireViz: Wiring harness documentation tool

Post by davefiddes »

Just stumbled across an interesting tool called WireViz which may be useful for documenting wiring harnesses.

The idea is you specify the wiring harness using a simple YAML text file with details of the connectors, cables and connections. The tool then renders a pretty diagram showing how things are connected and creates a BOM with the details of the connectors and wires. This is something I've wanted to find for years as drawing harnesses in 2D CAD or a schematic tool like Kicad is possible but takes a lot of work to produce a clear drawing.

The only significant shortfall for our uses that I can see is that it is not currently possible to specify a connection as a twisted-pair (for CAN, resolver, etc). The connections for which pin does what will be captured OK but the twist will be missing from the diagram. There is a feature request for this so it may appear in future releases.

The software works on Windows, Mac and Linux and is Open Source.

As an example you start with something like this:

Code: Select all

connectors:
  X1: &template1 # define a template for later use
    pinlabels: [GND, VCC, RX, TX] # pincount implicit in pinout
    type: Molex KK 254
    subtype: female
  X2:
    <<: *template1 # reuse template

cables:
  W1:
    wirecount: 4
    length: 1
    gauge: 0.25 mm2
    show_equiv: true
    color_code: DIN # auto-assign colors based on DIN 47100
    shield: true # add cable shielding

connections:
  -
    - X1: [1-4]
    - W1: [1-4]
    - X2: [1,2,4,3]
  - # connect the shielding to a pin
    - X1: 1
    - W1: s
and end up with a diagram like this:
wireviz-test.png
Anyway, hope this is useful to someone.
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mjc506
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Re: WireViz: Wiring harness documentation tool

Post by mjc506 »

Nice, I like that, good find!
jon volk
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Re: WireViz: Wiring harness documentation tool

Post by jon volk »

Not bad. Ill need to play with it a bit. Excel serves me well, but having a wire diagram is certainly helpful.
Formerly 92 E30 BMW Cabrio with Tesla power
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