Traditional methods for optimizing an Electrical Distribution System have always been less than ideal. Engineers are typically left with unsophisticated and manual spreadsheet tools. Any detailed feedback on critical metrics such as cost or weight typically relies on another organization and requires week or months. The resulting EDS is inevitably suboptimized, not due to a lack of engineering ability, but rather the tools available. To ensure that the EDS design is optimized from the outset, the design environment itself must be enhanced. There are four key attributes to this design environment.
Automation is required to ensure that designs are synthesized rather than manually created. There are many benefits of this, but efficiency and repeatability are most important to this conversation. The ability to measure and assess the design must be available in the design, while the engineer is designing. The metrics used to measure must be easy to create and modify. There must be multiple ways to view the resulting data to aid the engineer's understanding. Measuring a single design is important, but the ability to compare alternatives, or even the same design through time is required. Proper assessment of options requires the ability to compare them. The measurements provided must become enriched and more accurate as the design matures. Estimations in the architecture space will become exact figures in the harness manufacturing space.
This paper will discuss these and flow implications in detail and use some examples from the Mentor Graphics Capital suite.
