From an empty sheet to a released cutlist
How Wiring Studio models a harness, what it derives from that model, and how each view feeds the bill of materials and the cutlist.
Chapters
Last updated 3 September 2026
Design rule checks
Design rule checks run continuously over the whole project, not on demand and not per sheet. They catch the things that make a harness un-buildable or a BOM wrong: a cavity with no contact, a wire outside its terminal's gauge range, a cable with no length, a part with no price. Everything they report is clickable, and takes you to the thing it is about.
The badge
A badge sits in the bottom-left corner of the Design and Wiring canvases. It shows how many violations the project currently has, and turns red when any of them are errors rather than warnings. Hover it — or tap it — and a card opens listing them.
The badge is always there, including on a project with nothing wrong. It stays quiet rather than congratulating you, and it is also the only way into the settings dialog described below.
The checks run on your own machine over the local copy of the project, so they work offline and cost nothing to run. There is no “check now” button because there is nothing to wait for.
Reading the list
Violations in the card are grouped by sheet, with the sheet you are looking at first. Each row names the rule, the thing that broke it and where it is.
Clicking a row takes you to it. That may mean switching view, switching sheet, opening Pin Configuration on the right connector, opening Project properties, or opening the offending part in the library — whichever is the place the problem is actually fixed.
This is the fastest way to finish an Excel import. Everything the spreadsheet did not say is listed the moment the import completes, in the order you can work through it.
What is checked
There are 32 rules in nine categories. Errors are things that make the design wrong or the output unusable; warnings are things that are probably wrong but are legitimate in some designs.
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Connectivity | Cavities that are unused, out of range or carrying more than one wire; components with no part; connectors with nothing connected; wires with no part assigned. |
| Gauge limits | A wire outside the gauge range of the contact, ring terminal or splice it is assigned to. |
| Cutlist readiness | Cables with no length, cavities with no contact, wires with no route, and splices carrying a single wire. |
| Data integrity | Dangling connections, duplicate component names, mate mismatches and half-linked mates, and a shielded cable with no shield termination. |
| Cable dressing | Cables with no covering assigned. |
| References | Rows pointing at things that no longer exist, parts missing from the library, and parts used as the wrong category. |
| BOM completeness | Extra parts with no quantity or no length, and labels with no text or no length. |
| Manufacturability | Cavities with no seal, a connector whose cavity count no longer matches its part, a cable configured as shielded whose part is not, and more strands mapped than the part has. |
| Costing | Parts with no part number and parts with no price. |
Costing and BOM completeness are the two worth running before you quote from a BOM: an unpriced part does not fail anything, it just silently contributes nothing to the total.
Switching rules off
Not every rule applies to every job. Open Design rules from the badge's card to switch individual rules off for this project.
The setting is per project and shared with anyone else working on it. When any rules are off, the dialog header says how many, and the badge's label says so too — so a suppressed rule is never invisible. There is a control to switch them all back on.
Suppressing a rule hides its violations; it does not change the design. Cable dressing and Manufacturability are the usual candidates — a harness with no coverings by design, or one where seals are not used, would otherwise report a violation per cable or per cavity forever.
Working well with them
- Work the errors first. They are the ones that make the cut list or the PDF export wrong rather than merely incomplete.
- Check it after inserting a reusable component. A copy landing with unassigned cavities shows up here immediately.
- Check it before releasing. A clean board, or a board whose remaining warnings you have deliberately accepted, is the closest thing to a sign-off the app offers.
- Tune the rules once per project, not per violation. If you are dismissing the same rule repeatedly, switch it off.
Related chapters
Where this chapter leads next, and what it assumes you have already read.
BOM and cut list
Two outputs derived from the sheet: how quantities, pricing, multipliers and cut lengths are worked out.
Pin configuration
Where the harness is wired — the wire, contact, seal and colour codes on each connector cavity.
Project settings
Four settings with a long reach — units, the cutlist and price multipliers, and marker length.