Machine building: The digital twin of the cabling reduces material costs and increases productivity

Machine building

The digital twin of the cabling reduces material costs and increases productivity

Standardization in electrical engineering

Is your machine cabling being accomplished by trial and error? It doesn’t have to be this way! The digital twin makes it possible to determine exact cable lengths at an early stage in the process and to correctly ordered preassembled cables.

With the help of precise instructions, assembly technicians can work using plug-and-play when installing the cables. Eplan supports you for cabling machines with a 3D CAD system for electrical engineering.

Your workflow

Your challenge
Our solution

Trial & Error for machine cabling: can we please make it easier?

What cables do I need? What’s the best way to plan them? How long should they be? Planning the cabling between machines and control cabinets is often quite tedious in your day-to-day work. It isn’t uncommon for it to be carried out without any precise specifications, and the results can be different every single time. This means a lot of material waste is difficult to avoid.

Further, there are annoying surprises such as punchouts or drilled holes that are too small. Since they weren’t considered during the planning phase, slowing down the assembly process. Achieving a uniform appearance for the completed cabling is also out of the question without accurate 3D prototypes.

3D Model of the machine, control cabinet and complete cabling

All this is much easier with the right software! Electrotechnical 3D CAD systems such as Eplan Cable proD make it possible to depict 3D components of machines, the cabling and the associated control cabinets. And it can be accomplished without any training on complex MCAD software.

Once the electrical designs are complete, the 3D representation of the cabling can be transferred to a 3D MCAD system. This allows, for instance, collision checks to be run and the electrical design team can quickly clear up any issues as needed. The 3D model can also be used as a virtual prototype during ongoing assembly processes (see the film).

Digital Twin of the machine cabling

Advantages for planning

Plan and visualise cable routing, drill holes and punchouts
Determine cable lengths during the planning process
Order prefabricated cables from the manufacturer long before they will be installed
Define clear specifications for assembly and clearly depict them

Advantages for assembly

3D model available as a digital prototype for standardised cabling
Prefabricated cables can easily be connected
Trouble-free assembly and customer approval
Reduced material consumption reduces production costs

That's how our customers in machine building benefit from working with Eplan

psb intralogistics
Hahn Automation
Felder Group
Winkler und Dünnebier

"By precisely determining the cable lengths and providing detailed documentation, we save costs and avoid additional design time. Ordering the right cables reduces unnecessary waste and enables immediate installation."

psb intralogistics GmbH and eplan cable prod

"The system reliably determines the cable lengths, so you don’t have to measure beforehand or make corrections after the fact. And our technicians can work quickly without making any mistakes because the routing paths are displayed in the viewer."

Read the whole story

hahn-automation-story-with-eplan-cable-prod

20 % shorter development process for electrical design with Eplan Cable proD.

felder-group-story-with-eplan-cable-prod

“First time right, i.e. the quantity of cables is increased where the cable length is right the first time and not second time still wrong.”

Increased productivity
Digital twin for cabling

Increased productivity via prefabricated cables

Plan and design components and cabling on a 3D model. Clear specifications and the use of preassembled cables mean installation is easy, even for more inexperienced assembly technicians. With the digital depiction of your cabling, you can precisely determine the material requirements early in the process, which allows orders to quickly be placed for everything that is needed.

In addition, Eplan also has an HTML export feature so that assembly technicians can use a web browser to see directly how the engineers planned for the cables to be installed. This further ensures trouble-free realisation of the installation in which potential problems are recognised and avoided early in the process. This leads to an increased efficiency and higher quality throughout the entire process.

“Eplan Cable proD fundamentally changes the process of machine cabling and enables the efficient use and installation of prefabricated cables,” says Eplan Product Manager Germany Lukas Menzel.

More about Eplan Cable proD

Machine cabling? Get started using the digital twin for cabling now!

One cost driver in machine building is unknown cable lengths. Whether designed too short or too long, this has a direct influence on the machine’s cost. There hasn’t been much innovation here in the past years since established processes haven’t been put to the test. The Eplan Cable proD software has been developed for machine cabling. It revolutionises the cable planning and design process.