Editor’s Pick: Identify Electrical System Design Errors Early

Zuken recently released an extension to its E3.series of electrical CAD software for designing and documenting electrical wire harnesses, control systems, and hydraulic and pneumatic systems that identifies errors in your schematics during the development stage. How many do-overs could that save you?

The extension is called E3.eCheck. But, before we get into it, let’s digress a bit here for a riff on Zuken and the E3.series. You’re going to be hearing more about Zuken and its software over the next couple of years.

Zuken is well established in Japan and Europe, and it has been growing its North American footprint the past few years. It just opened up a new R&D center in Silicon Valley. Zuken develops PCB design and electronic data management software as well as the E3.series. You might know it best from its E3.WireWorks application that provides an out-of-the-box solution for design engineers working with SolidWorks Premium Routing tools on wiring, harnesses, cable assemblies, control panels, hydraulics, and pneumatics.

Now, the E3.series is a modular, integrated suite of Windows applications for the design and documentation of wire harnesses, cable assemblies, control systems, and panel layouts as well as fluid design for hydraulic and pneumatic systems. Through a single project database, it provides multiple views and access to schematics, cable plans, control panels, and fluid details. Files are linked and associative, and it supports the major MCAD and PLM/PDM platforms. E3.series has intelligent parts libraries of symbols and components, real-time rule checks, as well as the ECAD features and functions to go from concept to manufacturing to deployment and service.

The E3.eCheck utility resides in the E3.series extension product line along with a bunch of other tools and applications for jobs like creating manufacturing documentation for wire harnesses and cable assemblies, a tool for distributing components in a system and evaluating harnesses and sub-harnesses, and an intelligent viewer designed to integrate directly with dedicated after-sales and service systems.

The skinny on E3.eCheck is that it extends your E3.series ECAD environment with DC functional analysis and circuit checks for E3.series designs. Using it should ensured that your schematic is functionally accurate and that all your wires as well as fuses are within tolerance. It has features like current checking, current direction indicator, voltage drop analysis, and error navigation. It has multi-symbol and multi-sheet support. E3.eCheck works in real-time and is said to provide instant visual and audible feedback.

You can learn a lot more about Zuken’s E3.series solution and the E3.eCheck utility from today’s Pick of the Week write-up. Make sure to check out the E3.series intro video and DE’s Virtual Desktop report on Zuken’s approach to product-level design. The latter is more about PCB design, but the post and the video will give you an excellent feel for just what Zuken brings to the table.

Thanks, Pal. — Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s pick of the week write-up.

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