Electrical and Fluid CAD System Configured for Industries

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Zuken Inc. (Westford, MA, and Munich, Germany) has announced the availability of E³.series Industry Editions with the introduction of the 2012 version of its E³.series electrical wiring, control and fluid engineering system. Zuken describes Industry Editions as “specially configured electrical design suites ]that] meet the needs of key industries.” Versions of the Industry Editions are available for the machinery,  military/aerospace, power, railway, systems engineering, and transportation industries.

Zuken has announced the 2012 version of its E³.series electrical wiring, control, and fluid engineering system. Image courtesy of Zuken, Inc.

The E³.series is a modular engineering system providing functionality for electro-technical,  wiring and wiring harness, pneumatic, and hydraulic design. It provides for both the design and documentation of wire harnesses and cable assemblies as well as control systems and panel layouts.

Zuken says that the E³.series offers an advanced, integrated, object-oriented CAD engine that eliminates data transfers, increasing quality and reducing errors. Optionally,  it can integrate with ERP, PLM, and other enterprise business systems. The 2012 version of E³.series, reports the company, has been enhanced with new productivity tools including improved search capabilities, expanded table-driven data entry for cable and wire type modifications, and extended support for cable and harness design.

The new Industry Editions of the E³.series, says the company, evolved with industry-specific functionality through its experience working with major industry users of E³.series software. Zuken defines “industry-specific functionality” using the power industry as its example. Here, companies adhere to IEC (International Electronic Council) 81346 standards. Consequently, the E³.series Power Edition provides structured projects, reports, and templates that fit with that standard. The Railway Edition supports such required standards as EN 15380 parts I, II, and III based upon IEC 81-346. It also has multilingual capabilities and an open API (application programming interface) for creating custom outputs and formats.

The Transportation Edition of E³.series 2012 supports the automotive and special-purpose vehicle industries. Image courtesy of Zuken, Inc.

For the machinery industry, the E³.series Machinery Edition provides automated design functionality, multi-user collaboration, and the ability to manage entire product ranges within a single design project. Design projects are said to contain all the project data, such as schematics, panel layouts, bills of materials, and production information. Its object-oriented architecture is said to ensure that all design elements, attributes and changes reflect throughout the design immediately, all the way to production. Additional features include the ability to combine electrical and fluid schematics in one project. Parts library management, integration with MCAD, view and markup, and design data management are among its other achievable capabilities.

E³.series offers configurable, automatic wire numbering with freely defined attributes (highlighted area), and an incremental prefix and suffix. Image courtesy of Zuken, Inc.

The most recently announced Industry Edition is the E³.series Transportation Edition for automotive applications. It supports the Vehicle Electric Container (VEC)  standard STEP AP212/KBL used to define the exchange format of a vehicle wire harness between OEMs and suppliers. This design suite features automated connector pin terminal handling. According to the company, any modification to the wire gauge automatically results in the selection of the correct connector pin terminal, regardless of where changes are made in the design flow. Connector pin terminal selection, cavity seal selection, and environmental terminal selection are fully automatic, leading to fewer errors and more streamlined design flow, reports the company. The Transportation Edition also provides improved option handling with configurations and packages: Selecting a configuration automatically creates the relevant data for all departments involved in the production process.

Zuken’s E³.series software, as well as its E³.WireWorks for SolidWorks, runs on Windows platforms. For more information on the E³.series Industry Editions, visit Zuken.

Watch short videos on E³.series capabilities.

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Access an E³.series webinar (registration required).

Check out the electronics and electric design discussions on the Zuken blog.

See why DE’s editors selected the E³.series Industry Editions from Zuken as their Pick of the Week.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.