Working with a Harness Entry Object on a Schematic Sheet in Altium Designer

Parent page: Schematic Objects

A placed Harness Entry.

Summary

A Harness Entry is an electrical design primitive that is placed within a Harness Connector. A Harness Entry is the connection point through which signals - through wires, buses, and other signal harnesses - are combined to form a higher level Signal Harness. Signal Harnesses enable the logical grouping of different signals for increased flexibility and streamlined design.

Availability

Harness Entries are available for placement in the Schematic Editor only, by:

• Choosing Place » Harness » Harness Entry from the main menus.
• Clicking the  button on the Wiring toolbar.

Harness entries can also be managed in the following non-graphical ways:

• Added/edited/removed as part of the Harness Connector definition, on the Harness Entries tab of the Harness Connector dialog.
• Added/edited/removed as part of the textual harness connector definition, through a harness definition file (*.Harness). Such a defined harness connector can only be placed in the design using the Place » Harness » Predefined Harness Connector command, from the main menus.

Placement

After launching the command, the cursor will change to a cross-hair and you will enter harness entry placement mode. Placement is made by performing the following sequence of actions:

1. Move the harness entry attached to the cursor over a placed harness connector on the sheet.
2. Adjust the position of the harness entry in relation to the edge of the harness connector, opposite the connector's tip, then click or press Enter to anchor the harness entry, and complete placement.
3. Continue placing further harness entries, or right-click or press Esc to exit placement mode.

While the harness entry is still floating on the cursor, and while it is within the bounds of a harness connector, press the Tab key to access an associated properties dialog, from where properties for the harness entry can be changed on-the-fly.

Graphical Editing

This method of editing allows you to select a placed harness entry object directly in the workspace and change its location graphically.

A selected Harness Entry.

• Click and drag to reposition the harness entry vertically along the edge of its parent harness connector as required.
• Hold Ctrl, then click and drag the harness entry to move it from the current harness connector to another harness connector on the sheet. Once the harness entry has cleared the boundary of the source harness connector, the Ctrl key can be released.
• Clicking and dragging the harness entry outside of the harness connector boundary will cause the harness connector to automatically resize to accommodate the entry's new location.
• The name text for a harness entry object can be edited in-place by:
  1. Single-clicking the harness entry to select it.
  2. Single-clicking again (or pressing the Enter key) to enter the in-place editing mode. Sufficient time between each click should be given to ensure the software does not interpret the two single-clicks as one double-click (which would open the harness entry's properties dialog).
  3. To finish editing in-place text, press the Enter key, or use the mouse to click away from the harness entry.

Non-Graphical Editing

The following methods of non-graphical editing are available:

Via an Associated Properties Dialog

Dialog page: Harness Entry

This method of editing uses the following dialog to modify the properties of a harness entry object.

The Harness Entry dialog.

The Harness Entry dialog can be accessed prior to entering placement mode, from the Schematic – Default Primitives page of the Preferences dialog. This allows the default properties for the harness entry object to be changed, which will be applied when placing subsequent harness entries.

During placement, the dialog can be accessed by pressing the Tab key (while the harness entry is still floating on the cursor, and while it is within the bounds of a harness connector).

After placement, the dialog can be accessed in one of the following ways:

• Double-clicking on the placed harness entry object.
• Placing the cursor over the harness entry object, right-clicking and choosing Properties from the context menu.
• Using the Edit » Change command and clicking once over the placed harness entry object.

Via the SCH Inspector Panel

Panel pages: SCH Inspector, SCH Filter

The SCH Inspector panel enables the designer to interrogate and edit the properties of one or more design objects in the active document. Used in conjunction with appropriate filtering - by using the SCH Filter panel, or the Find Similar Objects dialog - the panel can be used to make changes to multiple objects of the same kind, from one convenient location.

Via the SCH List Panel

Panel pages: SCH List, SCH Filter

The SCH List panel allows the designer to display design objects from one or more documents in tabular format, enabling quick inspection and modification of object attributes. Used in conjunction with appropriate filtering - by using the SCH Filter panel, or the Find Similar Objects dialog - it enables the display of just those objects falling under the scope of the active filter – allowing the designer to target and edit multiple design objects with greater accuracy and efficiency.

Tips

1. A Harness Entry can be connected directly to a wire, a bus or a signal harness. The Harness Type field in the Harness Entry dialog is used when nesting signal harnesses. The field will auto-populate with the Harness Type of the connected signal harness.
2. Should you need to negate (include a bar over the top of) a harness entry name, this can be done in two ways:
   1. By including a backslash character after each character in the name (e.g. E\N\A\B\L\E\).
   2. By enabling the Single '\' Negation option on the Schematic- Graphical Editing page of the Preferences dialog, then including one backslash character at the start of the name (e.g. \ENABLE).