Top 5 Hidden Challenges of Cable Harness Design in Electronic Products

Cable harnesses are crucial for connecting and powering components in electronic products, ensuring seamless functionality. However, designing these harnesses presents challenges that can delay development, increase costs, or compromise product quality.

This blog will explore the most common obstacles in cable harness design for electronic product development and demonstrate how Altium multi-board and harness tools provide practical solutions.

Challenge 1: Handling Multi-Board Systems with COTS

Modern electronic products frequently rely on multiple interconnected PCBs linked via cable harnesses and incorporating Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components. Ensuring accurate connections across these boards is critical to prevent costly errors.

The Altium Advantage

• Multi-Board Schematic Integration: Altium seamlessly integrates board connectors and supports the placement of COTS components within the design.
• Streamlined Synchronization: Multi-board schematics synchronize directly with cable harness designs, minimizing connection mismatches and enhancing design consistency.
• Pin Mapping and Validation: Engineers can efficiently map and validate connections, ensuring precision and significantly reducing the need for rework.

Multiboard Schematic – A high-level system design illustrating board-to-board connections

Challenge 2: Rapid Design Iterations

Electronic product development often requires frequent design changes as prototypes evolve. Updating cable harness designs to match PCB layouts or component placement changes can be complex, time-consuming, and error-prone.

The Altium Advantage

• Real-Time Synchronization: Updates to connectivity or PCB designs are seamlessly reflected in cable harness designs, maintaining consistency throughout the process.
• Iterative Flexibility: Automated updates eliminate the need for manual adjustments, enabling faster and more efficient design iterations. 
• Version Control: The inbuilt version control system is optimized for full traceability and transparency by knowing who changed the project, when, and why. 

Design changes in Altium 365 - Track full project history

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Challenge 3: Integrating Mechanical and Electrical Constraints

Cable harness design isn't just an electrical challenge. It must also work seamlessly within the product's physical constraints. Tight bends, sharp edges, and limited mounting options can lead to mechanical stress or cable wear over time. Properly securing cables and ensuring flexibility without sacrificing durability requires collaboration between mechanical and electrical teams, sometimes leading to design trade-offs.

The Altium Advantage

• ECAD-MCAD Integration: Turn electronic and mechanical collaboration challenges into a competitive advantage by seamlessly working across domains without losing intent or time. Bi-directional data transfer between your ECAD and MCAD tools makes it easy to collaborate with your mechanical team and share design revisions as they happen. 
• Time Efficiency: Reduce design delays and bottlenecks when teams export, share, and import CAD files. Seamless ECAD-MCAD collaboration cuts development time, minimizes design responses, and accelerates time to market.

ECAD-MCAD Integration – Complete product visualization in Multi-board Assembly

Challenge 4: Managing Design Complexity, BOM Accuracy, and Manufacturing Documentation

Cable harness designs are becoming increasingly intricate, especially as electronic products become more compact and feature-rich. Without the right tools, design teams often face an increased risk of errors, inconsistencies, and inefficiencies—whether from overlooked electrical requirements, routing issues, or conflicting mechanical constraints. Also, managing an accurate and up-to-date Bill of Materials (BOM) for complex cable harnesses can be challenging, especially as designs evolve.

The Altium Advantage

• Simplified Complex Designs: Altium streamlines intricate cable harness designs with efficient layout routing and real-time validation, making the process faster and more accurate.
• Seamless BOM and Documentation Management: Automatically update the Bill of Materials (BOM) and generate precise manufacturing documentation, ensuring smooth production and collaboration.

Manufacturing Documentation – Ensure accuracy and readiness for production

Challenge 5: Collaboration - Bridging the Gap Between OEMs and Manufacturers

One of the biggest hidden challenges in cable harness design is ensuring seamless collaboration between OEMs and manufacturers. OEMs prioritize performance, integration, and compliance, while manufacturers focus on manufacturability, cost efficiency, and production scalability. Misalignment in design expectations, unclear documentation, and late-stage changes often lead to production delays, increased costs, and redesigns.

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The Altium Advantage

• Enhanced Collaboration: Altium Designer and Altium 365 enable better collaboration by providing a unified real-time environment for OEMs and manufacturers.
• Cloud-Based Data Sharing: Teams can instantly share harness schematics, layouts, and BOMs, reducing miscommunication.
• Live Commenting: This feature enables manufacturers to provide feedback directly within the design, ensuring changes are tracked and aligned.

By leveraging Altium, OEMs and manufacturers can streamline communication, accelerate design validation, and reduce production risks, ultimately leading to a more efficient and cost-effective cable harness design process.

Collaborative Design – Streamline feedback and teamwork in real time

Conclusion

Cable harness design is critical, but it comes with hidden challenges – handling multi-board systems, adapting to rapid design iterations, integrating mechanical and electrical constraints, managing complexity and BOM accuracy, and ensuring seamless collaboration – all of which can significantly impact project timelines, costs, and overall product quality.

Altium solutions address these challenges head-on by providing powerful tools that help engineers streamline their design workflows, reduce errors, enhance manufacturability, and accelerate time to market.

Ready to intuitively design multi-board systems complete with harnesses? Discover the easiest way to create complex designs and error-free system interconnections!