Harness Editor

What you'll learn

• How a "harness" relates to your diagram and how to assign wires to a harness
• How to open the harness editor and read its canvas (ports, segments, placards)
• How to add waypoints, bundle segments, and pick curve types and direction
• How to set routed lengths and apply harness treatments
• How to configure tolerances and cut-lengths
• How to navigate back to the diagram from the harness editor

Prerequisites

• Complete Tutorial 4: Make your First Diagram. You need at least one diagram with two or more wires you can group.

Steps

1Understand what a harness is

A harness in Artifact is a named group of wires in your diagram (for example, "Main Harness" or "Engine Harness"). Every wire carries a harness name; wires that share a name belong to the same harness. Multiple harnesses can live together in a single diagram.

The harness editor is a separate physical view of one harness within a diagram. When you open it, Artifact generates connector ports, routing segments, and waypoints from the diagram connectivity. You can then edit lengths, curve types, bundling, and treatments to produce a harness drawing ready for manufacturing.

2Assign wires to a harness from the diagram

1. Open your diagram and select one or more wires or cables on the canvas.
2. In the right Properties pane, find the row labeled Harness.
3. Click the combobox (placeholder Select harness name...).
4. Pick an existing harness name, or type a new one and confirm — custom values are allowed.

As soon as a single wire carries a harness name, the harness appears in the Harnesses pane in the editor's left pane.

Screenshot

3Open a harness in the harness editor by doing one of the following:

• Harnesses pane (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+H) → click the harness → double-click or click the Open harness viewer ↗ icon (the in-app tooltip still reads "Open harness viewer"). You can also press Enter with the harness selected, or right-click → Open in New Tab.
• Edge Properties → Harness row → click the ↗ icon next to the harness name. This also selects the corresponding segments in the harness editor.
• Right-click a harness-assigned wire → Open Harness: "…".

The harness opens in its own tab (green cable icon, titled with the harness name). The right pane changes from Properties to Harness Properties.

4Navigate the harness editor

You will see:

• Connectors at every endpoint — they show Reference Name, Part Name, and an optional pin table. You can flip orientation.
• Segments — colored paths between two points. By default they are Bezier. They can also be Straight or Step.
• Waypoints — small draggable circles where segments meet or split. Double-click on a segment to add a waypoint. Double-click a waypoint to delete it (joining adjacent segments).
• Symbol devices, splices, inline components — carried over from the diagram.
• Placards — floating labels connected to a segment's midpoint by a dashed line. Each placard can show Segment Contents (cables/wires with color swatches) and Treatments (overbraid, conduit, etc.).

Screenshot

5Edit segment properties in the Harness Properties pane

Click a segment to select it. The right pane shows a row of compact controls at the top:

• Segment Color dropdown — set stroke color
• Three icons — Straight, Bezier, Step — set the curve type
• Show Path — selects all segments that share content with this one

When the segment is Bezier or Step, two Direction Pickers appear with the labels Point A and Point B and four arrow buttons each. They override the auto-computed endpoint directions. If you have overrides set, a Reset button (Reset endpoint directions to auto-computed) becomes available between them.

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6Set routed length

Below the curve controls sits the Routed Length.

1. Click the Routed Length numeric input and enter a value.
2. Pick a unit from the dropdown (in, ft, mm, cm, m).
3. Click the eye toggle to show or hide the length label on the segment in the canvas.

Lengths set in the harness editor sync back to the diagram. The wire's Routed Length on the diagram becomes "defined in harness" and shows a ↗ link back to the harness editor.

7Add waypoints, split, and bundle

Several flows produce the same result — pick whichever fits the moment:

• Double-click a segment to insert a waypoint at the click position. The segment splits in two.
• Properties → Segment Bundling → Add Waypoint — same, at the computed midpoint of the selection.
• Right-click the canvas or a segment → Add Waypoint.
• Drag an existing waypoint onto a segment to snap and split at the nearest point.

To bundle multiple parallel segments through a shared corridor:

1. Select two or more segments whose contents do not overlap (the same wire cannot be bundled with itself).
2. Properties → Segment Bundling → Bundle, or right-click → Bundle.
3. Artifact creates two waypoints and routes the selected segments through the new bundle path.

To join segments back, double-click a waypoint to delete it. If the resulting segments share endpoints and contents, Artifact will auto-merge them.

To delete all waypoints and rebuild from the current diagram connectivity, click the floating Regenerate Segments button.

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8Inspect Segment Contents

The Segment Contents section shows every cable and wire routed through the selected segment(s). Headers include inline icons:

• Eye — toggle placard visibility for contents
• List — toggle showing the child wires of a cable in the placard
• ↗ — open the diagram and select the referenced wires (jump back to the source)

The table columns are Reference Name, Part Name, and Routed Length (or Route Length + Cut Length when your Build Config defines a cut-length formula — Step 9). Cable rows have a chevron to expand/collapse its contents; clicking a row shows the route of that given cable or wire.

9Set tolerances and cut lengths (Build Config)

Manufacturing lengths live in the Build Config tab (factory icon) in the harness editor's left pane — it only appears in the harness editor, and its settings are saved per diagram version. Each section is driven by a small formula:

= CEIL [step] ((LENGTH × [multiplier]) + [offset]) — Artifact takes a segment's routed length, scales it by the multiplier, adds the offset (with its own unit), then rounds up to the nearest CEIL step (0.1, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, or 10).

Tolerances (the ± row) — the allowed length deviation for a segment.

1. Click Add Tolerance and set the multiplier, offset, and unit.
2. Check Bilateral to give the + and − directions different values (the formula splits into a + line and a − line); leave it unchecked for a symmetric ± tolerance.

Cut Lengths — the length each conductor is cut to before routing (service loops / slack baked into the multiplier and offset).

1. Click Add Cut Length and set its multiplier, offset, and unit.
2. Once a cut-length formula exists, the Segment Contents table gains a Cut Length column (Step 8) and the diagram's Routed Length relabels to Route Length.
3. Click Cut List (top-right of the section) to open the full cut list — the same list also lives in BOMs & Exports (Tutorial 9: BOMs & Exports).

Conditional rules. Either section can hold more than one rule, each scoped to a route-length range. Click Add Conditional Tolerance / Add Conditional Cut Length to add a band: set a rule's upper bound (ROUTE_LENGTH < [max]) and the rules chain into [min] ≤ ROUTE_LENGTH < [max] ranges, with the last rule covering everything above. A red border flags ranges that overlap or leave a gap; remove a rule with its trash icon.

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10Add treatments

Treatments are physical coverings (overbraid, overwrap, conduit, bundle-tie, no-overlay) created as library items under Harness Treatments. To apply them:

1. Select the segment(s) you want to cover.
2. Harness Properties → Segment Treatments → Add Treatment.
3. In the Select Treatment modal (search placeholder Search treatments...), pick the treatment.
4. For bundle-tie, set the Interval + unit in the row that appears (e.g. one tie every 6 inches).
5. Drag rows to reorder when multiple treatments stack.

If a neighboring segment already has the same treatments, use Use Left Treatments, Use Right Treatments, or Use Neighbor Treatments to copy them.

Treatments render visually on the segment (patterns, conduit thickness, tie marks), appear on the placard, and are added to the BOM (Tutorial 9: BOMs & Exports).

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11Return to the diagram

• Click the diagram tab in the tab strip. The harness editor stays open in its own tab with the green cable icon.
• In Harness Properties with nothing specific selected, click the document icon next to the parent diagram name in the header.
• In Segment Contents, click the ↗ icon to open the diagram and pre-select the referenced wires.
• On a port or symbol selection, the Reference Name row has a ↗ to Open diagram and select items.

Summary

You assigned wires to a harness from the diagram, opened the harness editor, and worked with its canvas: ports, segments, waypoints, and placards. You set curve types and endpoint directions, set routed lengths that sync back to the diagram, bundled and split segments, configured tolerance and cut-length formulas in the Build Config tab, and applied harness treatments. You can now move between schematic and physical views fluently using tabs and the ↗ jump-back icons.

What's next

• → Tutorial 7: Versioning — snapshot or release the work you've done in the diagram and harness editor.
• → Tutorial 9: BOMs & Exports — generate the harness BOM, cut list, and connections table for manufacturing.