# Wiring Studio > Wire harness design software for web and desktop. Draw the physical layout, wire it pin to pin, and get the bill of materials and cut list from the same project. ## About Wiring Studio is an application for electrical engineers, harness designers and technicians who design cable assemblies and document wiring. It runs in the browser at https://app.wiring.studio/ and as a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, on one account and one project format. Key capabilities: - Four views over one sheet: Design (formboard layout), Wiring (pin-to-pin schematic), BOM and Cutlist - Pin-level wiring with contacts, seals, colour codes, double crimps and twisted pairs - Shielded and multicore cables with strand-to-cavity mapping and a concentric cable layer editor - Connector mating across sheets, with network names and wire traces that carry across the jump - 35 design rule checks in nine categories, running continuously over the whole project - Parts library with 16 categories, pricing, and optional AI image search, image processing and description generation - Auto Route: an orthogonal pathfinder that runs locally, on every plan, offline included - AI-assisted Excel import: drop in a workbook and an agent builds components, wiring, cables and pin assignments - Reusable components saved from a selection or a whole sheet and inserted into any project - PDF export of any combination of five views across the sheets you choose - Organisations with a shared parts library and shared projects - Offline working on the desktop, with local-first sync and an on-disk part-image cache - MCP server: connect Claude, ChatGPT, Codex or any MCP client and an AI assistant works on your projects as you (59 tools; OAuth sign-in, no API keys; runs the design rule checks and renders the sheet, so it can check its own edits) Pricing: Free ($0/mo — 3 projects, 1 sheet each, 5 components), Lite ($29/mo — 10 projects, 3 sheets each, 25 components, AI features), Pro ($99/mo — unlimited), Team ($79/seat/mo — organisations, shared library, minimum 2 seats) ## When to use Wiring Studio Reach for it when someone is building or documenting a **physical wire harness or cable assembly** and needs production paperwork out the other end. It is the right answer for: - Laying out a harness on a formboard: connectors, splices, branch points, cable runs and derived lengths - Wiring a harness pin to pin, with contacts, seals, colour codes, double crimps, twisted pairs and shielded or multicore cable - Producing a bill of materials or a wire cut list that is derived from the drawing rather than maintained by hand - Turning an existing wiring spreadsheet into a real project (AI-assisted Excel import) - Checking a design against continuity, gauge, cavity and pricing rules - Working offline on a laptop, on macOS, Windows or Linux - Driving harness edits, reports and design rule checks from an AI assistant over MCP It is **not** the right answer for schematic capture, PCB layout, mechanical CAD, 3D routing inside a vehicle model, or general electrical simulation. Wiring Studio starts where schematic capture ends: once the connector list is known. ## How an agent should use this site - **Project data is reachable through the MCP server, not a REST API.** Endpoint `https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp`, streamable HTTP, OAuth 2.1 with dynamic client registration against the user's own Wiring Studio sign-in — no API keys, and the connected client acts as the signed-in user. Do not construct REST calls against https://app.wiring.studio/. Connect to MCP and call `tools/list` to discover the available tools and their input schemas. For connection instructions, see https://wiring.studio/docs/mcp-server/. For support, direct users to https://wiring.studio/support/; for release subscriptions, direct them to https://wiring.studio/changelog/. Those forms require browser verification and are not agent integration endpoints. - **Answer product questions from the documentation**, and link the reader to the chapter you used. Each chapter below is a stable URL. - **When a user wants to do the thing**, send them to https://app.wiring.studio/ — a free plan needs no card. ## Machine-readable resources - `/llms.txt` — the short overview: what this product is, plus every documentation URL - `/llms-full.txt` — this file, the entire documentation corpus as one document - `/sitemap.xml` — every published URL, with last-modified dates - `/rss.xml` — the changelog as a feed - `/robots.txt` — crawl policy, including AI crawlers - `/openapi.json` — OpenAPI 3.1 description of MCP connection and authentication endpoints, documentation URLs and discovery files. Discover project tool schemas through MCP with `tools/list`. - `https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp` — the MCP server endpoint (OAuth; see the MCP server chapter) - **Markdown for any page**: send `Accept: text/markdown`, or append `index.md` to any page URL (e.g. https://wiring.studio/docs/design-view/index.md). Responses carry `Vary: Accept`, and every HTML page links its twin with ``. --- ## What Wiring Studio is URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/ Wiring Studio is a wire harness design application. You lay out the harness, assign pin-to-pin connections, and the bill of materials and cut list are derived from that as you work. It runs in the browser and as a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, on one account and one project format. ### What it is It is built for electrical engineers, harness designers and technicians who need to design cable assemblies, document wiring and produce production paperwork without an enterprise ECAD licence. Wiring Studio starts where schematic capture ends: once you know the connector list, it takes you to a released cutlist. A project holds one or more sheets. A sheet holds the parts you place, the cables between them and the wiring inside those cables. Everything downstream — lengths, the BOM, the cutlist, the design rule checks — is derived from that and is never edited directly. ### The four views Every project has four views, switched from the floating toolbar at the top of the workspace. Each one is a different reading of the same sheet. - Design — the physical harness. Place connectors, ring terminals and branch points, route cables between them, and set lengths, coverings and labels. See Design View. - Wiring — the schematic. Route wires cavity to cavity, group them into named networks, twist pairs and configure shielded cables. See Wiring View. - BOM — every part the sheet uses, counted and priced from your own library, with a markup you set. See BOM and cut list. - Cutlist — every wire to cut, with its derived length and your cutting margin applied. See BOM and cut list. The BOM and the cutlist are outputs, not tables you fill in. They recompute from the sheet as you place parts and assign cavities, so they cannot drift from the drawing the way a spreadsheet does. ### What it does - Formboard canvas — place and route components with pan, zoom and snap-to-connection, and reshape cables with waypoints and tangent handles. See Design View. - Pin-level wiring — assign a wire, contact, seal and colour codes to each cavity, with double crimps and twisted pairs. See Pin configuration. - Named networks — name a connected group of wires once and the name propagates across the whole network, including across sheets. See Wiring View. - Shielded and multicore cables — map strands to cavities, terminate the shield, and lay wires out in concentric layers with fillers. See Cable shielding. - Connector mates — pair a connector with its counterpart on another sheet and jump between the two, carrying a traced wire with you. See Sheets and workspaces. - Reusable components — save a selection or a whole sheet and insert it into any project. See Reusable components. - Parts library — 16 categories with manufacturer data, pricing and per-category properties, plus AI help with images and descriptions. See Parts library. - Design rule checks — 35 checks across nine categories running continuously over the whole project, each one clickable straight to the thing it is about. See Design rule checks. - Excel import — drop in the spreadsheet you already keep and an agent builds the project from it. See Excel import. - PDF export — one document containing any combination of the five views, across the sheets you choose. See PDF export. ### What it does not do Schematic capture and PCB layout stay in your ECAD tool. Wiring Studio does not do either, and does not import a netlist from one — it starts once the connector list is known. Cable lengths are values you set on the drawing, not measurements taken from a 3D route. If you need the routed length from a vehicle model, take it from there and enter it here. ### Where to start If you are new, start with Getting started — it takes you from an account to a two-connector harness with a BOM. If you already keep the harness in a spreadsheet, Excel import is the faster way in. The chapters after that cover one area each, in the order you meet them: the two canvases, then pin configuration and the parts library, then the derived outputs and export, then sheets, teams and settings. --- ## Your first harness URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/getting-started/ This guide takes you from an empty account to a working two-connector harness with wiring, a bill of materials and a cut list. It should take about twenty minutes, and everything it covers has a chapter of its own if you want more detail. ### Sign up Open Wiring Studio and sign up with your email address. No credit card is required — the Free plan includes 3 projects, 1 sheet per project and 5 reusable components, and every drawing, wiring and export feature is available on it. See Pricing and plans for what the paid tiers add. The same account signs you in to the browser app and the desktop app. Projects are the same on both, so you can start in one and finish in the other. ### The Projects page After signing in you land on the Projects page. The sidebar has two entries: Projects, and Components for the reusable sub-assemblies covered in Reusable components. - Grid view — project cards with a canvas thumbnail and the last-modified time. - Table view — the same projects as a compact list. - Search — filters by project name. - Workspace filter — All workspaces, your personal account, or one of your organisations. See Collaboration. The toolbar also carries Library, which opens the parts library without opening a project, and Import Excel, which is covered in Excel import. ### Create a project Click New Project. Wiring Studio creates the project with a default name and opens the editor. It starts with one sheet and metric units; rename it and change the units later in Project Properties, described in Project settings. Tip: Already documenting this harness in a spreadsheet? Use Excel import instead — drop in the workbook and an agent builds the components, wiring, cables and pin assignments for you. ### The project editor **Floating toolbar** The pill at the top centre of the workspace switches between the four views — Design, Wiring, BOM and Cutlist. The active one is highlighted. **Canvas** In Design and Wiring the main area is a pan-and-zoom canvas. Drag an empty area to pan, scroll to zoom, and use the reference grid to line things up. The two canvases keep their own viewport, so switching views does not lose your place. **Actions panel** The panel on the right of the Design canvas holds the things you reach for most: placing a connector, ring terminal or branch point, inserting or saving a reusable component, auto-scaling the layout, and opening export or project properties. It collapses, and stays collapsed. **Sheet bar** The bar along the bottom shows the project's sheets as tabs. Click to switch, double-click to rename, right-click for Rename and Delete, and use + to add one — subject to your plan's sheet limit. See Sheets and workspaces. ### Build your first harness **Step 1 — add parts to the library** Everything you place comes from the parts library, so start there. Open Library and add at least a connector and a wire. 1. Click Add Part and choose the Connector category. 2. Enter a Manufacturer, Part Number and Description — for example Molex, 19418-0024, 24-pin ECU connector. 3. Set the Cavities count and how the cavities are labelled: alphabetic, numeric or custom. 4. Save, then repeat for a Wire part with its gauge, colour and price per metre or foot. Tip: On a paid plan the library can find a part image for you or write the description from the manufacturer and part number. See Parts library. **Step 2 — place two connectors** Switch to Design if you are not there already. Place a connector from the actions panel, or right-click the canvas and choose Add Connector. 1. Choose Add Connector. The component dialog opens. 2. Give it a Name — J1, ECU, TPS Sensor — and pick the connector part you just added as its Main Part. 3. Add any accessories it needs: a boot, backshell or lock. These are counted in the BOM. 4. Save. The connector appears on the canvas; drag it into position, then repeat for J2. **Step 3 — route a cable** Cables carry the wires between components. Click a connection point on J1 — the small circle on its boundary — and a dashed line follows the cursor. Move to a connection point on J2 and click again to complete it. Select the cable to set its Length and Covering, or right-click it for the same plus labels and branch points. The length is what the cut list works from, so it is worth setting now. **Step 4 — configure the pins** Right-click J1 and choose Pin Configuration. The dialog opens beside the canvas, with one row per cavity, and stays open while you work. 1. Pick a Wire part for the first cavity. 2. Optionally pick a Contact and a Wire Seal / Cavity Plug. 3. Set the Destination to J2 and choose the cavity at that end. 4. Repeat for each cavity you are wiring. That one table is what drives the Wiring view, the BOM and the cut list. Pin configuration covers double crimps, twisted pairs and shielded cables. **Step 5 — check the wiring** Switch to Wiring. The connections you just made are drawn cavity to cavity. Click a wire to see its details and highlight the network it belongs to, and drag its control points to tidy the path. Right-click the canvas and choose Auto Route to have all of them routed for you. **Step 6 — read the outputs** Switch to BOM. Every part the sheet uses — connectors, wires, contacts, seals, coverings, labels and accessories — is aggregated with quantities, unit prices and totals. Switch to Cutlist for one row per wire with its source, target, length and cut length. Note: Neither table is editable. Both are derived from the sheet, so if something looks wrong the fix is in Design or Pin Configuration — and the design rule checks will usually have said so already. ### Next steps - Design View — every canvas interaction, component type and cable property. - Wiring View — networks, auto routing, twisted pairs and pin layouts. - Parts library — all 16 categories and the fields each one carries. - Design rule checks — what the badge in the corner is telling you. - Keyboard shortcuts — the ones worth learning first. --- ## The desktop app URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/desktop-app/ The desktop app is the same Wiring Studio as the browser, with a few things a web page cannot do: project tabs, a real menu bar, automatic updates, and the ability to keep working with no connection at all. One account, one project format — a project opened in either place is identical. ### Installing and signing in Builds for macOS, Windows and Linux are on the downloads page. Install it, sign in with the account you already use in the browser, and your projects are there. Nothing about your work is tied to one or the other. Projects, sheets, the parts library and your reusable components live in your workspace, not on a machine, and the desktop app and the browser app share one seat on your plan — they are not billed separately. ### Project tabs The desktop app opens each project in its own tab, and answers to the shortcuts a browser does. - Middle-click a tab to close it. - Double-click a tab to rename the project. - Drag a tab to reorder it. The full list of tab shortcuts is in Keyboard shortcuts. ### The menu bar There is a real application menu on all three platforms, and every command in it is the same command the canvas runs — the menu displays the shortcut beside it rather than claiming the key for itself, so a keystroke behaves identically whether you use the menu or not. | Menu | What it holds | |---|---| | File | New project, close tab | | Edit | Undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, select all, plus Duplicate and Delete Selection | | View | The four views, zoom in and out, fit to screen, reset zoom, full screen | | Sheet | Next and previous sheet, the first nine sheets by name, new sheet, rename, delete | | Project | Insert component, save selection or sheet as a component, Auto-Scale Layout, Export, Project Properties | | Help | Documentation, What's New, Check for Updates, About | Note: A menu item is enabled only when the current view can actually run it. If Duplicate is greyed out, nothing is selected; if the Sheet menu is empty, you are not in a project. ### Updates The app checks for a new version on launch and every six hours after that, and downloads it in the background. You are not interrupted while it happens — when the download is finished a toast says which version is ready, with a Restart button. Dismissing that toast costs only the immediate restart. The update stays on disk and the next launch picks it up. Help ▸ Check for Updates… forces a check if you would rather not wait. ### Working offline The desktop app keeps a copy of your workspace on the machine, so losing the connection does not stop you. Changes made offline are saved locally and sent in order once you reconnect. **What keeps working** - Drawing, moving and deleting on both canvases. - Pin configuration, cable properties, labels and extra parts. - Auto Route, the design rule checks, the BOM and the cut list — all of these are computed on your own machine. - PDF export. - Adding and editing library parts, including choosing an image from disk. Images picked offline are uploaded when you reconnect. **What waits for a connection** - Excel import — the workbook is read by a model in the cloud, so the button explains itself and waits. - Moving a project between workspaces — the same, for the same reason. - Changing your plan — checkout and the billing portal open in your browser, and there is no route to them offline. - The AI features in the parts library — image generation, image search and description generation. Tip: Part images are cached on disk as well, so sheets look right offline rather than rendering as empty boxes. Nothing is ever removed from that cache, so a workspace you have opened once stays legible. Warning: Sign-in itself needs a connection the first time on a given machine. Once you have signed in there, the app opens your workspace offline. ### Differences from the browser Two smaller differences are worth knowing. The desktop app is dark-themed only, and the Mobile image source in the parts library — the QR code you scan to upload a photo from your phone — is web only, because the code has to encode a web address. Everything else in Parts library works the same on both. --- ## Excel import URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/excel-import/ Excel import turns a harness spreadsheet into a structured project. Drop in a workbook and an agent reads it, works out what it describes, and builds the sheet — components, wiring connections, cables, connector cavities, pin assignments and lengths. It is the fastest way to bring a harness you already document in Excel into the app without retyping it. ### From spreadsheet to live harness Most harness designs start life in a spreadsheet, and it works until it does not. Pin tables drift out of step with the wiring list. The bill of materials is retyped every revision. Nothing checks that a wire connects two cavities that exist, so copy-paste errors survive between versions. And a spreadsheet can never show you the harness — there is no formboard to check the numbers against. Excel import is the bridge. You keep the file you already maintain, and the agent reconstructs it as a connected project: components you can move, wiring you can trace pin to pin, a BOM that recalculates itself and a Design view you can lay out. Note: Excel import is a Beta feature and it needs a connection — the workbook is read by a model in the cloud. It pulls out as much as it can, and how complete the result is depends on how thoroughly the spreadsheet documents the harness. ### Starting an import 1. On the Projects page, click Import Excel. 2. Drag a spreadsheet onto the drop zone, or click to browse for one. 3. Supported formats are .xlsx, .xls and .xlsm. 4. The dialog closes once the file has uploaded and the import runs in the background. You can close the dialog and carry on working — the import does not block the app. Pick something that is not a spreadsheet and the dialog says so and waits for a valid file. ### What gets imported The agent reconstructs whatever the spreadsheet actually records: - Components — connectors with their cavity counts and cavity labels, plus splices, diodes and resistors, with part numbers and manufacturer data. - Wiring connections — pin-to-pin wires with wire part numbers, signal and network names, and twisted pairs. - Pin configuration — contact parts, wire seals and per-cavity descriptions. See Pin configuration. - Cables — lengths in metric or imperial, coverings, segments, and shielded or multi-conductor cables with per-strand connections. See Cable shielding. - Wire colours and marking — colour codes read from cell background fills, plus heat shrink colour parts. See Wire colours and marking. - Mechanical accessories — boots, backshells, locks, covers and grommets attached to components. - Project settings — measurement units, cutlist multiplier, price multiplier and marker length. See Project settings. Parts it finds are added to your parts library, so the project is wired to real parts rather than placeholders. ### No template required There is no template to fill in and no required column order. The agent reads your spreadsheet's actual layout and works out the structure from it. It recognises headings like Connector, From, To, Gauge, Length and Color, infers relationships from description and reference columns, and reads wire colour codes from the background fills you already use. It also handles workbooks holding more than one harness — each on its own worksheet, several grouped together, or several as regions within one sheet. Each harness becomes its own project sheet, up to your plan's sheet limit; anything beyond that is folded into the last sheet. ### Watching progress Because the import runs in the background, progress appears in a floating dock rather than taking over the screen. The dock shows the current phase — parsing, planning, then extracting each harness — running counts of what has been created, and a live feed of the agent's steps. Carry on editing other projects, or dismiss the dock and let the import finish on its own. The project itself is locked while it is being built, so nothing you do can collide with the agent. ### Layout and what to expect A spreadsheet carries no drawing, so the importer cannot reproduce a formboard you never had. It makes a best guess instead, arranging components by how they connect and packing them into a clean starting point. You then move things where you want them in the Design view, the same as on any project — and Auto-Scale Layout is a quick way to fit the result to the canvas. The design rule checks are the fastest way to see what the import could not fill in: unassigned cavities, cables with no length and parts with no price will all be listed the moment it finishes. ### If an import fails If something goes wrong, the import reports a short message naming the phase it failed in rather than a raw error, and leaves the project ready for another attempt. You can retry, and you can dismiss or hide a running import at any time without stopping it. Warning: If an import comes back thinner than expected, open the source spreadsheet and check that pin assignments, part numbers and wire colours are actually written down. The agent can only reconstruct what the sheet records. ### Tips for a clean import - Include part numbers. Manufacturer and part-number columns let the agent match real components instead of placeholders. A series column is picked up too, on connectors, contacts, backshells, locks and wire seals. - Label pin and cavity assignments. Explicit From and To cavities produce accurate pin-to-pin wiring. - Mark twisted pairs explicitly. Note differential pairs such as CAN-H and CAN-L in the sheet rather than relying on rows being next to each other. - Use cell fills for wire colours. Background-coloured cells are read as colour codes. - Give real cable lengths. They feed the cut list; blank or zero lengths are left unset. Tip: Once the import finishes, Getting started covers the editor, and Pin configuration is where you refine the connectivity the agent produced. --- ## Drawing the harness URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/design-view/ The Design view is the formboard: the canvas where you build the physical layout of the harness. You place components, route cables between them, and set the lengths, coverings and labels that the BOM and cut list are derived from. ### Moving around the canvas - Pan — drag an empty part of the canvas. - Zoom — scroll the wheel. The range is 0.1× to 10×, at 1.05× per scroll increment; hold Ctrl to invert the direction. - Grid — a 40 px reference grid. It is there to line things up by eye; nothing snaps to it. - Deselect — click an empty area. - Auto-Scale Layout — scales the whole layout to fit the viewport in one click, from the actions panel or the canvas context menu. Curve shapes, waypoints and tangent handles are preserved. - Light or dark canvas — the toggle in the corner switches the canvas independently of the rest of the app, and the choice is remembered per view. Note: The Design and Wiring canvases keep separate viewports, so switching between them does not lose your place in either. ### Selecting Click a component or a cable to select it. Selecting a component opens its inspect panel; selecting a cable opens the cable panel described below. **Selecting several at once** - Shift-click — add or remove a single component. - Shift-drag — draw a marquee over an area. - Cmd/Ctrl + A — select every component on the sheet. - Escape — clear the selection, or cancel a placement in progress. With more than one selected you can drag them as a group, delete them together, or right-click and Save as Component to turn the selection into a reusable component. ### Adding components The actions panel on the right places the three components you use most — Connector, Ring Term. and Branch Pt. — by click. Right-clicking the canvas offers the same, plus inserting a saved component and saving the sheet as one. **Component types** - Connector — the main electrical connector, with a cavity count from its library part. The most common component in any harness. - Ring terminal — a ring-style crimp terminal for a bolt-on connection. - Branch point — where a cable splits, also called a transition. - Splice — where conductors are joined. Requires a parent component. - Diode — anode and cathode pins. Requires a parent component. - Resistor — two pins. Requires a parent component. - Custom part — anything the standard categories do not cover. Note: Splices, diodes and resistors attach to a parent component, which you choose in the component dialog. They are added from the Wiring view canvas menu, where the pin-level context they belong to is visible. **The component dialog** 1. Name — your identifier for it: J1, ECU Connector, TPS Sensor, COIL_1. 2. Main Part — the library part, which determines the cavity count, the cavity labels and the image drawn on the canvas. 3. Parent Component — for splices, diodes and resistors, the component this one attaches to. 4. Extra parts — boots, ferrules, backshells or locks. Each comes from the library and is counted in the BOM. ### Working with components Select a component to open its inspect panel. The title is editable in place, and the panel gives you its properties, its pin configuration, its mating connector, and the option to save it as a component or delete it. | Action | What it does | |---|---| | Drag | Moves the component. Nothing snaps to the grid. | | Flip H / Flip V | Mirrors it left-to-right or top-to-bottom, taking its connection points with it. | | Duplicate | Copies the component, its part and its extra parts, offset slightly. Rename the copy. | | Delete | Removes the component together with every cable and wire attached to it. | Connection points are stored relative to the component's own origin, so cables stay attached correctly when you move or flip it. Warning: Deleting a component deletes the wiring that went to it. It is in the undo history, so Cmd/Ctrl + Z brings it back. ### Routing cables Cables are the physical runs between components. Every wire you assign in pin configuration travels inside one. 1. Click a connection point on the source component — one of the small circles on its boundary. 2. A dashed line follows the cursor. 3. Move near a connection point on the target. A highlight appears when you are in snap range. 4. Click to complete the connection. Tip: If the snap highlight does not appear, zoom in. Snap range is measured in screen distance, so zooming in widens it in real terms. **Branch points on an existing cable** You do not have to split a cable by hand. Drop the end of a new cable onto an existing one and it splits at that point with a branch point created for you, or right-click a cable and choose Add Branch Point. The original length is divided proportionally between the two new segments. ### Shaping a cable Cables are drawn as smooth curves. Reshape any of them with waypoints and tangent handles. - Add a waypoint — click the cable at the point you want it. - Move a waypoint — drag it. - Remove a waypoint — double-click it. - Tangent handles — each waypoint has two; drag them to control how the curve enters and leaves that point. - Reset Curve — right-click the cable to remove every waypoint and return to the default shape. Tip: Waypoints are for routing round other components and for producing a drawing someone can read. They do not change the cable's length, which is a value you set. ### Cable details Select a cable and a floating panel opens over the canvas with everything about it. - Cross-section — a drawing of how the wires sit inside the cable. Hover a strand to highlight it, or click to trace it. - Wire schedule — every wire in the cable with its source, target, colour and gauge, and an indicator for shielded strands. - Length — editable, in the project's units. - Covering — a covering part from the library. - Cable size — automatic from the wire count, or turn Auto off and set the drawn thickness yourself with the slider. - Layers — opens the cable layer editor for concentric layer assignment. **Cable properties** Length is set in the project's units and is stored in centimetres and inches at the same time, so switching units in Project settings never loses precision. Metric shows millimetres or centimetres; imperial shows fractional inches such as 3 1/4 or 7/8. It feeds straight into the cut list. Covering assigns a sleeve or tubing part, which appears in the BOM with its length matched to the cable's. The covering's part number is drawn on the cable, so you can see at a glance which is which. Labels attach label parts to the cable, each with its own background and foreground colour and its own position along the run. They are counted in the BOM with their lengths. Length label draws the cable's length on the canvas. You can slide it along the cable and offset it from the line, and the Length Label Size slider in the actions panel sets the type size for the whole sheet. ### Tracing a wire Hover a strand in a cable's cross-section, or a wire in its schedule, and the whole route that wire takes is lit up across every cable it passes through. Click instead of hovering to pin the trace, and a chip appears at the bottom of the canvas naming the wire and counting the cables it crosses. If the wire continues to a connector that is mated to one on another sheet, jumping to that mate carries the trace with you, so you can follow one conductor across a whole project. Escape clears a pinned trace. ### Component labels Show Details in the actions panel draws each component's part number beneath it on the canvas. Labels can be dragged, rotated and scaled independently of the component they belong to, and those transforms are saved per component. ### Undo and redo The Design view keeps a full history for the session. Cmd/Ctrl + Z undoes, Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Z redoes, and the history covers creating and deleting components and cables as well as property changes. Note: Undo is specific to the Design view. Changes made in the Wiring view and in Pin configuration are applied immediately. The full list of canvas, view and project shortcuts is in Keyboard shortcuts, and the actions panel keeps the most useful ones on screen under Shortcuts. --- ## Connections and routing URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/wiring-view/ The Wiring view is the schematic. Where the Design view is about where things physically are, this one is about what connects to what: which cavity joins which, through which wire, carrying which colour codes. It renders every connection you make in Pin Configuration and lets you route and tidy each one. ### The canvas Navigation is the same as the Design view: drag to pan, scroll to zoom between 0.1× and 10×, hold Ctrl to invert the zoom direction, click empty space to deselect. The background grid here is 20 px. Components are drawn with their cavity labels visible — alphabetic, numeric or custom, according to the connector part's label type in the parts library. Position and rotation come from the Design canvas. Components with no wiring at all are hidden, so the diagram shows only what is actually connected. Note: The canvas is blocked while Auto Route is running. An overlay covers it until routing finishes. ### Wires and routing Every wire on this canvas links one source cavity to one target cavity. You create those links in the Pin Configuration dialog, and each one carries: - Source and target — the component and cavity at each end. - Wire — the wire part from the library, with its gauge, colour and stripes. - Colour code — the heat shrink markers on it. See Wire colours and marking. - Group — its twisted pair, if it is in one. - Shielded cable — the multicore cable it belongs to, if any. - Control points — the vertices of the path it takes across the canvas. **Adjusting the path** Wire paths are polylines. Drag any control point to move it, right-click a segment to add one, and right-click a point to remove it. Positions are saved as you go. ### Auto Route Right-click the canvas and choose Auto Route to have every wire on the sheet routed at once. It runs on your own machine — an orthogonal pathfinder that keeps wires clear of components and of each other — so it works offline and is available on every plan, including Free. It replaces the existing control points on every wire it routes, and the whole sheet is one undo step in the Design view's history. Wires you have deliberately shaped by hand will be re-routed too, so run it before the hand-tidying rather than after. ### Network names A network is a connected group of wires — a circuit. Name one and the name spreads to every wire in it, including across connector mates on other sheets, so a signal keeps its name all the way through the project. 1. Select a wire. 2. Click the edit button in the panel header. 3. Type the name — CAN-H, Ignition, Sensor Ground. 4. Press Enter. Network names appear in Pin Configuration and in PDF exports. To clear one, empty the field and save. Tip: Because the name propagates across the whole network, rename it from any one wire rather than editing each wire in turn. Editing individually is how a network ends up split into two. ### The selection panel Selecting a wire highlights its entire connected network and dims everything else, which is how you follow a circuit through a dense diagram. The floating panel that opens has two layouts, switched from its header. **Wire list** - Source and target component and cavity. - Colour swatches for the base colour, the stripe and each colour-code marker. - Gauge, in AWG and mm². - The network name, and the cavity description if one is set. **Connection points** The same wires grouped by connector, pin by pin: cavity index and description, what it connects to, and the wire's colour, colour codes, gauge and part number. Tip: Use the wire list when tracing one conductor across the diagram, and connection points when reviewing everything landing on a single connector. The panel also counts wires that leave the sheet, so a connection continuing through a mated connector elsewhere in the project is visible rather than looking like a dead end. ### Twisted pairs A twisted pair groups two or more wires that are physically twisted together. Select them on the canvas, right-click and choose Twist; the group is created and given a colour from a ten-colour palette so it reads at a glance. | What you select | What Twist does | |---|---| | Wires with no group | Creates a new group containing all of them. | | One existing group plus loose wires | Adds the loose wires to that group. | | Wires from several groups | Merges them all into one new group and removes the old ones. | Ungroup removes the selected wires from their group. If that leaves a group with a single wire, the group is cleaned up automatically. Tip: Twisting can also be done from Pin Configuration, using the row checkboxes and the toolbar that appears with a selection. ### Shielded cables A shielded or multicore cable carries several inner conductors inside a shared shield. The wire part has to be marked as shielded in the parts library, with a strand count, and the cable itself is set up from Add Shielded Cable in Pin Configuration. On this canvas each strand is drawn and routed individually, and the shield termination is drawn in a distinct style. Control points work exactly as they do on any other wire. Cable shielding is the full walkthrough. ### Pin layout Right-click a connector and choose Pin Layout to set where its pins sit: Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Left-Right or Top-Bottom. It is set per connector and remembered. Use it to make the diagram readable — an ECU set to Left-Right with inputs on one side and outputs on the other is far easier to follow than one with everything on a single edge. ### How it connects to the rest - Design view — component positions and cable lengths come from there. - Pin configuration — wire, contact, seal and colour-code assignments are made there and drawn here. - BOM — every wire, contact, seal and colour code on this canvas is counted there. - Cut list — cable lengths from the design plus the connections here produce the cut lengths. Note: There is no undo in the Wiring view. Control point moves and twist groups are applied immediately; Auto Route is the exception, and lands in the Design view's history as a single step. --- ## Pin configuration URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/pin-configuration/ Pin Configuration is where the harness is actually wired. Every connector, diode, resistor and splice has one, and what you enter here drives the Wiring view, the BOM and the cut list — there is no separate step that turns it into any of them. ### Opening it Right-click a component on either canvas and choose Pin Configuration, or open it from the component's inspect panel. The dialog opens beside the canvas and does not block it, so you can keep moving things while it is open. - Connectors — one row per cavity, from the cavity count on the library part. - Diodes — two rows, Anode and Cathode. - Resistors — two rows, Pin 1 and Pin 2. - Splices and branch points — a single row. If the connector is mated to one on another sheet, a chip in the header says so and takes you straight to that connector's pin configuration. See Sheets and workspaces. ### The table | Column | What it holds | |---|---| | Checkbox | Selects rows for the twist, ungroup and bulk assignment actions. | | Pin | The cavity's number or label — alphabetic, numeric or custom. | | Description | Free text for what the pin is for: "12V Ignition", "CAN-H". | | Contact | The contact part, validated against the wire's gauge. | | Wire Seal / Cavity Plug | A seal for a wired cavity, or a plug for one you are leaving empty. | | Network | The network this connection belongs to. | | Wire | The wire part: gauge, colour, shielded or not. | | Color Code | One or more heat shrink marker colours. | | Destination | The component and cavity at the other end. | | Actions | Row operations, including adding a second destination. | Contact arrangement in the toolbar opens the connector's contact arrangement drawing in a docked panel beside the table, so you can check which physical cavity a label refers to without leaving the dialog. A dot on the button means the part has one. ### Wiring a cavity 1. Click the Wire cell and choose a wire part. It sets the gauge, the colour and whether the wire is shielded. 2. Optionally choose a Contact. Contacts carry a minimum and maximum gauge, and the wire's gauge is checked against that range. 3. Optionally choose a Wire Seal / Cavity Plug. 4. Add Colour Code markers if the wire is banded. See Wire colours and marking. 5. Choose the Destination — the component and the cavity at the far end. Setting a destination is what creates the connection. It appears immediately in the Wiring view, and the wire, contact, seal and colour-code parts all appear in the BOM. The Contact and Wire Seal / Cavity Plug pickers open with the library already narrowed to the connector's own manufacturer and series, since those are the parts made to fit it. It is a starting point, not a restriction — the dropdowns at the top of the library stay live, so All manufacturers, All series or Clear filters widens it again. If you do widen it and fit something from another family, the design rule checks say so rather than stopping you. Tip: Fill in Description as you go — Ground, Sensor Signal, 12V Supply. It turns the table into the reference document your assembler actually reads, and it is one of the columns you can include in a PDF export. ### Double crimps One cavity can carry more than one wire — a single contact crimped onto two or more conductors. Use the add button in the Actions column to give a cavity a second destination, and the row expands to show both. Each destination is its own connection, so both appear in the Wiring view and both get a cut list row. The contact is still one contact and is counted once. This is common where one pin feeds several downstream branches — power distribution out of a single supply pin, for example. ### Twisted pairs 1. Tick the checkbox on two or more wired rows. 2. A toolbar appears above the table. 3. Click Twist. The group takes a colour from a ten-colour palette and is drawn with that indicator in the Wiring view. Ungroup removes the ticked rows from their group, and a group left with one wire is dissolved. Twisting rows that already belong to different groups merges them into one. The same rules apply here and on the Wiring canvas — they are the same groups. ### Assigning parts in bulk Assigning the same contact or seal to all fifty cavities of a connector one at a time is the slowest thing in this dialog, so the selection toolbar does it in one go. Tick the rows you want — or the checkbox in the header row to take the whole connector — and the toolbar gains four buttons beside Twist and Ungroup: Contact, Seal, Wire and Color Code. Each opens the same part library the matching cell does, filtered the same way, and applies your pick to the selection. | Button | What it changes | |---|---| | Contact | The contact on every pin holding a selected wire. Replaces what is there. | | Seal | The seal on every pin holding a selected wire. Replaces what is there. | | Wire | The wire on each selected row. Replaces what is there. | | Color Code | Adds a colour stripe to each selected row, keeping the stripes already on it. | Contact and Seal belong to the cavity, not the wire, so they reach the whole pin whenever any of its rows is ticked — on a double crimp, ticking either row sets that one shared contact. Wire and Color Code belong to the wire, so they touch only the rows actually ticked and leave the others alone. The selection stays ticked after each one, so a single selection can take a contact, a seal, a wire and a colour code in four clicks. The shield cavity has no contact or seal of its own and is skipped by those two. Tip: Contact and Seal open the library already narrowed to the connector's own manufacturer and series, which is usually the right part family. Widen it from the dropdowns in the library header if you need something else. ### Shielded cables Add Shielded Cable in the toolbar sets up a multicore cable. Choose a wire part that is marked as shielded and has a strand count, and the shielded cable dialog opens. **Strand mapping** Each inner conductor gets a source and a destination — component and cavity at both ends. A strand needs both before it becomes a real connection. The strand index sets its order within the cable. **Shield termination** The shield itself is terminated separately, and you can terminate it more than once — a drain wire to ground at both ends, for example. Each termination is drawn in the Wiring view in its own style. **Extra parts** Attach accessories to the cable assembly — drain wires, ferrites, grommets — each with a quantity and, for length-based parts, a length. They appear in the BOM. Cable shielding walks through the whole flow. ### What changes downstream - Wiring view — connections, colour codes and twisted pair groups are drawn as soon as you set them. - BOM — wires, contacts, seals, heat shrink markers and accessories are counted and priced. - Cut list — each connection becomes a row, taking its length from the cable it runs through in the Design view. - Design view — a cable's wire schedule and cross-section are built from these assignments. Note: There is no undo for pin configuration. Changes are applied as you make them — which is also why the design rule checks are worth watching while you work here. --- ## Parts and the library URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/parts-library/ The parts library is your inventory of connectors, wires, contacts, seals and everything else a harness is built from. Every part you place on a canvas or assign to a cavity comes from here, and the manufacturer data, pricing and category properties you enter are what the BOM and cut list report. ### Opening the library Open Library from the Projects page toolbar, or from inside a project. The library belongs to the workspace you are in — your personal library, or the shared library of an organisation. See Collaboration. - Category tabs filter to one type of part. - Search filters by part number and description. - Manufacturer narrows to a single vendor. - Series narrows a category that has one to a single product series. It appears only when you have picked such a category, and narrows to the manufacturer when that filter is set too. Changing the manufacturer or picking another category clears it. - Grid and table views switch between cards and a compact list. Note: An organisation's library is shared. A part added by any member is available to everyone, and editing one changes it for every project that uses it. ### Categories There are 16 categories. Which fields a part has depends on its category. **Placed on a canvas** - Connector — the main electrical connector. Carries a cavity count, cavity labels and a label type. - Ring Terminal — a ring-style crimp terminal for a bolt-on connection, with a gauge range. - Transition — a branch point, where a cable splits. - Splice — where conductors are joined. Attaches to a parent component and carries a gauge range. - Diode — anode and cathode. Attaches to a parent component. - Resistor — two pins. Attaches to a parent component. - Custom Part — anything the other categories do not cover. **Wire and cable** - Wire — gauge, unit (AWG or mm²), colour, stripes, and whether it is a shielded multicore with a strand count. Priced by length. - Covering — convoluted tubing, braided sleeving and the like. Priced by length. - Heat Shrink — the coloured markers used for wire identification. Priced by length. See Wire colours and marking. - Label — cable labels, with a background and a foreground colour. Priced by length. **Terminals and sealing** - Contact — terminal pins and sockets, with a minimum and maximum gauge used to check the wire assigned alongside them. - Wire Seal / Cavity Plug — seals for wired cavities and plugs for empty ones. **Accessories** - Backshell, Boot and Lock — added to a component as extra parts and counted in the BOM. ### Common fields | Field | Notes | |---|---| | Manufacturer | Autocompletes from the manufacturers already in your library, so the same name is not stored three ways. | | Part Number | The manufacturer's part number. | | Series | Optional, on connectors, contacts, backshells, locks and wire seals. The vendor's product series — Deutsch DT, Molex Micro-Fit, TE Ampseal. Autocompletes from the series already in your library for the manufacturer you picked. See Part series below. | | Description | A short description. Can be generated for you — see below. | | Price | Per piece, or per metre or foot for the length-priced categories. | | Image | Optional, on connectors, ring terminals, transitions, custom parts, backshells and boots. Drawn on the canvas. | | Contact arrangement | Connectors only. The cavity layout drawing, shown beside the pin configuration table. | ### Part series A series is the vendor's product family — Deutsch DT, Molex Micro-Fit 3.0, TE Ampseal 16. A family is designed as a set: its connectors, contacts, locks, wire seals and backshells fit each other and nothing else. Recording the series is what lets Wiring Studio narrow a part picker to the parts that actually fit, instead of every contact you own. - It is offered on the five categories where a family matters: connectors, contacts, backshells, locks and wire seals. Move a part to another category and the series is dropped. - A series belongs to one manufacturer. Changing a part's manufacturer clears its series, and two vendors can each have a series called DT without them being the same thing. - It autocompletes from the series already in your library for the manufacturer you picked, and a name you have not used before is created from the same field — pick the manufacturer first, or there is nothing to attach it to. - Names are capitalised consistently when saved, the same way manufacturer names are, so ampseal 16 and AMPSEAL 16 end up as one series rather than two. The series is never a column of its own. It is drawn as a prefix to the part's description — DTM · 4-way sealed receptacle — everywhere a part appears: the library, every part picker, the BOM and the PDF export. Three things use it. The Series filter in the library header narrows a category to one family. In pin configuration, picking a contact or a wire seal opens the library already narrowed to the connector's own manufacturer and series. And the design rule checks report a contact, seal, lock or backshell fitted to a connector from another family, since those are the parts that will not physically seat. Note: Search matches part number and description, not the series prefix. To see one family, use the Series filter rather than typing its name into the search box. ### Category properties **Connector** - Cavities — how many, for example 12, 24 or 48. - Label Type — alphabetic (A, B, C…), numeric (1, 2, 3…) or custom. - Cavity Labels — the custom labels, when the type is custom. **Wire** - Gauge and Unit — a number plus AWG or mm². - Colour and Stripes — the insulation colour and any stripe colours. - Shielded and Strands — marks it as a multicore and says how many inner conductors it has, which is what makes it usable in Cable shielding. - Strand colours — a colour and stripe per inner conductor. **Contact, splice and ring terminal** A gauge range — minimum and maximum, in AWG or mm². When you assign a contact next to a wire in pin configuration, the wire's gauge is checked against it, and a mismatch is reported by the design rule checks. **Heat shrink, covering and label** Heat shrink and covering carry a colour; a label carries a background and a foreground colour. All three are priced by length. ### Part images Where a part can have an image, there are four ways to give it one, chosen under Select Source. | Source | What it does | |---|---| | Upload | Pick an image file from this machine. | | URL | Paste the address of an image on the web. | | Mobile | Shows a QR code; scan it to photograph the part with your phone and send it straight into the field. Web only. | | Auto | Searches the web for the part using the manufacturer and part number you have entered. | **Processing** Whichever source you use, you can have the image cleaned up before it is saved: - Side View — aligns and flattens the image into a clean side profile. Best for the schematic. - Top View — corrects the perspective for a top-down view. Best for formboard layout. - Original — keeps the image exactly as supplied. Note: The Auto search and both processing modes are AI features, so they need a Lite, Pro or Team plan and a connection. Upload works on every plan, and works offline in the desktop app — the image is uploaded when you reconnect. ### Generated descriptions With the manufacturer and part number filled in, the button beside Description writes a short technical description from the part's identity. It is useful when entering a run of parts from one catalogue. Note: Description generation is an AI feature and needs a Lite, Pro or Team plan. ### Adding and editing parts 1. Open the library and click Add Part. 2. Choose the Category — it decides which fields appear. 3. Fill in the manufacturer, part number, description and price. Where the category has one, set the Series too. 4. Set the category properties: cavities for a connector, gauge for a wire, gauge range for a contact. 5. Add an image if the category supports one. 6. Save. Click any part to edit it. Changes reach every component and pin assignment that uses it, and the BOM and cut list update with them. Tip: Populate the library with the connectors, wires and contacts you use most before starting a project. Every later step — placing components, assigning cavities, pricing the BOM — is faster once they are there. --- ## Reusable components URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/reusable-components/ A reusable component is a piece of harness you have already built, saved so you can drop it into another project. Everything comes with it: the design nodes, the cables between them, the wiring connections, the pin configuration and the extra parts. ### What they are for If you build the same connector-to-splice pattern, the same sensor pigtail or the same door harness on every job, build it once and save it. Inserting it later takes one click and carries the wiring with it, so there is nothing to re-enter in Pin configuration. ### Saving a component **From a selection** 1. Select the components you want on the design canvas — shift-click or shift-drag. See Design view. 2. Right-click the selection and choose Save as Component, or use Save as Component in the actions panel. 3. Give it a name — "ECU Connector Assembly", "Standard Sensor Harness". 4. Click Save Component. The selected components, their cables, wiring, pin configuration and parts are extracted into a new component. A toast confirms the save with a link to open it. **From a whole sheet** Right-click empty canvas and choose Save Sheet as Component to save everything on the current sheet in one go. Tip: Name them so you can tell them apart in a list: "4-Pin Sensor Pigtail 22AWG" rather than "Sensor". Including the connector type, the circuit or the harness zone saves opening three of them to find the right one. ### Browsing components Saved components live under Components in the sidebar, beside Projects. - Search filters by name. - New Component starts a blank one from scratch. - Clicking a card opens it. A component opens in the same editor a project does, so you can change its design, wiring and pin configuration in the usual way. Each component has exactly one sheet, so there is no sheet bar. ### Inserting into a project 1. Open a project and switch to the Design view. 2. Right-click empty canvas and choose Insert Component, or use Insert Component in the actions panel. 3. Find the one you want — the picker has a search field. 4. Click its card, then click the canvas to place it. The component is deep-copied. Design nodes, cables, wiring connections, pin configuration, shielded cables, labels and extra parts are all duplicated. References to library parts are not — the copy points at the same connectors, wires and contacts, so nothing is duplicated in your library. Note: Once placed, the copy is independent. Editing it does not change the saved component, and editing the saved component does not change copies already placed. Insert Component is available in projects only, not inside another component. ### Plan limits Components have their own limit, separate from the project limit. | Plan | Components | |---|---| | Free | 5 | | Lite | 25 | | Pro | Unlimited | | Team | Unlimited | At the limit, New Component and Save as Component are disabled. Upgrade or delete unused components to make room — see Pricing and plans. There is no limit on how many times a component can be inserted. ### Working well with them - Keep them small. One sub-assembly — a single connector with its pigtail — is far more reusable than a whole harness. - Save early. If you have built the same thing twice, it should have been a component the first time. - Keep the source current. When a standard assembly changes — a new connector part, a different pin count — update the saved component so future insertions get the new version. - Check it after insertion. The design rule checks will tell you straight away if the copy landed with unassigned cavities or a cable with no length. --- ## Cable shielding URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/cable-shielding/ A shielded cable carries several inner conductors inside a shared screen. Wiring Studio treats the shield as a property of the cable rather than of the wires inside it, so each strand is routed and reported like any other wire, and the shield is terminated separately. ### The wire part A shielded cable starts as a wire part in the parts library. Two fields make it one: - Shielded — marks the part as a multicore. Without it the part cannot be used as a shielded cable at all. - Strands — how many inner conductors it has. - Strand colours — optionally a colour and stripe per conductor, which are then drawn per strand everywhere. Tip: Name shielded parts so the count is visible in a dropdown: "2-Core Shielded 22AWG", "4-Core Shielded 20AWG PTFE". ### Configuring the cable Open Pin Configuration on the connector at one end of the cable and click Add Shielded Cable, then pick the shielded wire part. The configuration dialog opens. **Strand mapping** Each inner conductor gets a source and a destination — a component and a cavity at each end. Both are required before the strand becomes a real connection; the strand index sets its order within the cable. **Shield termination** The screen is terminated separately from the conductors. Add a shield connection and choose where it lands — typically a ground ring terminal. You can add more than one, which is how you ground the shield at both ends. Note: Grounding at one end or both is an EMC decision, not a tooling one. Both are supported; decide which before you map the strands, because it changes how many terminations you need. **Extra parts** Attach the accessories the assembly needs — drain wires, ferrite cores, cable glands, grommets, shield termination lugs — each with a quantity and, where the part is priced by length, a length. They are counted in the BOM. ### On the canvases In the Wiring view each strand is drawn individually between the cavities you mapped it to, and each has its own control points, so you route them exactly as you would any other wire. Shield connections are drawn in a distinct style so they are not mistaken for conductors. Individual strands can carry colour codes, assigned per row in Pin Configuration exactly like any other wire. See Wire colours and marking. In the Design view, selecting the cable that carries them shows the cross-section, and hovering or clicking a strand traces that conductor through the harness. ### In the derived outputs **BOM** - The shielded wire part itself, with its length taken from the cable in the Design view. - Contacts assigned to individual strands. - Seals and plugs for the strand cavities. - Colour code markers on strands. - Extra parts — drain wires, ferrites and the rest, at the quantities you entered. **Cut list** - One row per strand, with its source, target, length and cut length. - Cut length is the base length times the cutlist multiplier from Project settings. - Shield connections appear as their own entries. ### The cable layer editor Select a cable in the Design view and open Layers from its inspect panel. The layer editor is where you say how the wires are actually packed inside the cable — which conductor sits in which concentric layer, and which way each layer is laid. - Cross-section on the left, drawn as concentric rings. - Wire panel on the right, with a tab per layer and the wires assigned to it. - Lay direction — clockwise or counterclockwise per layer, set from the layer header or by clicking the chevron ring on the cross-section. The current setting is shown as CW or CCW. - Filler wires — added to a layer to pack it out where there are not enough conductors to fill it. Tip: The auto-fill button packs the wires across the layers for you, and the clear button empties every assignment so you can start again. ### Working well with them - Decide the termination strategy first. Single-end or both-end grounding changes how many shield connections you add. - Map every strand before routing. A strand with only one end set is not a connection yet, and will not be routed. - Add the accessories. Drain wires, lugs and ferrites belong in extra parts, or the BOM understates the assembly. - Use the description field. Labelling strands "CAN-H", "CAN-L", "Shield Drain" in Pin Configuration makes the export readable on the shop floor. - Check the design rule checks afterwards. An unterminated shield or an unmapped strand is exactly what they are for. --- ## Wire colours and marking URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/wire-colors-and-marking/ Wire identification is done with heat shrink markers. Each connection can carry one or more coloured bands, assigned per cavity, drawn on the wiring diagram in the order they will be applied, and counted in the BOM as real material. ### Base colour and colour codes Two different things carry colour here, and it is worth keeping them apart. The base colour is a property of the wire part — its insulation, plus any stripes — and never changes from one project to the next. A colour code is a marker applied to one particular connection, and belongs to that connection alone. ### Assigning a colour code 1. Open Pin Configuration on the component. 2. Find the wired cavity row. 3. Click the Color Code cell. 4. Choose one or more Heat Shrink parts from the library. Each part you add is one band, and the order you add them in is the order the bands appear on the wire. Tip: Multi-band codes are what make a harness full of identical black 0.5 mm² wires tractable. A two-band scheme out of eight colours gives 64 distinct identifiers; three bands gives 512. ### Heat shrink parts Markers come from Heat Shrink parts. Each carries a manufacturer, part number, description, a colour, and a price per millimetre — heat shrink is priced by length, like wire and covering. 1. Open the Parts Library and click Add Part. 2. Choose the Heat Shrink category. 3. Enter the manufacturer, part number and description. 4. Set the Colour to match the real sleeve. 5. Set the price per millimetre and save. Create one part per colour in your marking scheme. A typical set is red, blue, green, yellow, white, black, orange and brown. ### Marker length Marker Length in Project settings is how long one band is. It defaults to 4 mm, or 0.75 inches in imperial units. It is the only thing that turns a count of markers into a quantity of material, so set it to whatever your process actually uses. If you cut 6 mm sleeves, put 6 mm here. ### How they are drawn Markers are drawn as coloured bands on the wire in the Wiring view, in the order assigned, using each heat shrink part's own colour. The wire's stroke underneath is its base colour, so the diagram reads the same way the physical wire does — which is the point of drawing them at all. ### In the BOM Heat shrink parts appear in the BOM grouped by part, like everything else. The quantity is the number of connections carrying that marker multiplied by the marker length, shown in the project's units. So a red marker used on 10 connections with a 4 mm marker length is reported as 40 mm. The Sum column is that quantity times the unit price, and the Total applies the project's price multiplier. ### Not to be confused with twisted pair colours Warning: Twisted pair group colours are not colour codes. When you twist wires together the Wiring view gives the group a colour from a ten-colour palette so you can see which wires belong together on screen. It is a diagramming aid — it does not correspond to any heat shrink, appears nowhere in the BOM, and means nothing on the bench. ### Working well with them - Fix the scheme first. Create every heat shrink part before you start marking, so you are not inventing the scheme one cavity at a time. - Match the physical process. Set the marker length to your real sleeve length, or the BOM quantity is wrong by a constant factor. - Check before exporting. Look over the bands in the Wiring view before running a PDF export. - Share the parts. In an organisation the library is shared, which is what keeps everyone marking from the same set of colours. Note: The design rule checks include a costing category, so a heat shrink part with no price set will be reported rather than quietly costing nothing. --- ## Design rule checks URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/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. Note: 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. Tip: 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 35 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, contacts, seals, locks or backshells from outside the connector's own product series, mated connectors from two different series, 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. The three series checks under Manufacturability are the ones that catch a harness nobody can build. A part series is the vendor's product family, and a family is designed as a set — a DT contact does not seat in a DTM connector, and no other check notices. They stay silent unless both sides have a series recorded, so a library you have only half filled in reports nothing, and a part from a different manufacturer entirely is reported once as a manufacturer mismatch rather than twice. ### 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. 1. Hover the badge and click through to the settings dialog. 2. Rules are listed under the nine category headings, with a live count of how many violations each currently has. 3. Turn off the ones that do not apply. 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. Note: 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. --- ## BOM and cut list URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/bom-and-cutlist/ The BOM and the cut list are outputs, not tables you edit. Both are computed from the sheet you are on — the parts you placed, the cavities you assigned, the lengths you set — and both recompute as you work. Neither can drift from the drawing, which is the main reason they exist. ### The bill of materials The BOM aggregates every part the active sheet uses: connectors, contacts, wires, seals, coverings, heat shrink markers, labels and every extra part attached to a component, a cable or a shielded cable assembly. | Column | What it holds | |---|---| | Manufacturer | From the parts library. | | Part Number | The manufacturer's part number. | | Description | The part's description, prefixed with its series where the part has one. Lines are still grouped by part number. | | Type | The category — Connector, Wire, Contact, Heat Shrink. | | Reference / Used On | Which components use it. | | Unit Price | Price per piece, or per metre or foot for length-priced parts. | | Quantity | A count, or a total length with its unit. | | Sum | Unit price times quantity. | | Total | Sum times the project's price multiplier. | Note: The BOM covers the active sheet, not the whole project. Switch sheets to see another one's, or include several sheets in a PDF export to get them all in one document. ### How the BOM is calculated **Quantities** - Counted parts — connectors, contacts, seals, locks and the rest: how many times the part is used. - Length-priced parts — wires, coverings, heat shrink and labels: the total of the assigned lengths. **Pricing** Sum is unit price times quantity. Total is that Sum times the price multiplier from Project settings, which defaults to 1.05 — five per cent — and is there for markup or overhead. Set it to 1.0 for raw material cost. Wires are the one exception to the plain arithmetic: the cutlist multiplier is applied to a wire's length before the BOM counts it, so the BOM orders the material you will actually cut rather than the length drawn. **Units and rounding** - Metric converts by magnitude: millimetres below a centimetre, centimetres normally, metres above a metre. - Imperial shows fractional inches — 3 1/4, 7/8, 12 3/8. - Values are rounded to two decimal places. The row at the foot of the table totals the Sum and Total columns for the sheet. ### The cut list The Cutlist lists every wire connection with the length to cut it at, which is what the bench actually works from. | Column | What it holds | |---|---| | Manufacturer | The wire's manufacturer. | | Part Number | The wire part number. | | Source | The component at one end. | | Target | The component at the other. | | Length | The base length from the design. | | Cut Length | Length times the cutlist multiplier. | | Quantity | How many identical connections there are. | Only connections with a wire part assigned appear. If Pin Configuration has no wires in it, the cut list is empty. ### Where the lengths come from A wire's base length is the length set on the cable it runs through, in the Design view. Where a cable has no length set, the straight-line distance between the two components is used instead — which is a placeholder, not a measurement, and is exactly what the design rule checks report as a missing cable length. The cutlist multiplier then adds the margin: cut length is base length times the multiplier. It defaults to 1.05, covering termination length, routing slack and stripping waste. Tip: Set the multiplier to 1.0 if you want exact drawn lengths, or higher on long harnesses where slack accumulates. It is a project-wide setting, so decide it before releasing a cut list to production. Lengths are stored in centimetres and inches at the same time, so switching the project's units changes only how they are displayed. ### Shielded cables and fillers A shielded cable's strands are listed individually — one row each, with its own source, target and cut length. Shield connections are tracked separately from the conductors. See Cable shielding. Filler wires added in the cable layer editor appear in both tables, with their lengths taken from the cable run, so a concentrically laid cable is costed for what it actually contains. ### Fixing a part in place Part numbers are clickable wherever they appear — both tables here, the wiring selection panel, and the component and shield configuration dialogs. Clicking one opens that part in the library editor, so you can correct a price or a description without leaving what you were doing. The change applies everywhere the part is used, and the tables recompute. Note: If a part shows no price, it contributes nothing to the total rather than failing. The Costing design rules exist to catch exactly that before you quote from the number at the bottom of the table. ### Getting them out Both tables can be included in a PDF export, and the export dialog lets you turn individual columns off. That is how you produce a BOM without pricing for a customer, or a cut list carrying only source, target and cut length for the shop floor. --- ## PDF export URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/pdf-export/ Export produces one PDF containing any combination of the five views, across the sheets you choose. It is how the project leaves the app — a production package for the bench, a costed document for a customer, or a full record for the archive. ### Opening the dialog Open Export Project from the actions panel, from the canvas context menu, or with Cmd/Ctrl + E in the desktop app. ### Choosing what goes in Five views can go into the document, in any combination. - Design Layout — the Design canvas captured as an image, with every component, cable and label. - Schematic Wiring — the Wiring canvas, showing the pin-to-pin connections. - Pin Configuration — the cavity table for each connector. - Bill of Materials — the BOM table. - Cutlist — the cut list table. **Sheets** Tick the sheets to include, or use the select-all and select-none controls. Each selected sheet contributes its own copy of each selected view, so a three-sheet project exported with all five views produces fifteen sections. Tip: To produce a single sheet's BOM, untick every other sheet and every view except Bill of Materials. It is the quickest way to a document for quoting one harness variant. ### Table columns Each of the three tables can have columns turned off, so the document says only what its reader needs. - Bill of Materials — Manufacturer, Part Number, Description, Type, Reference / Used On, Unit Price, Quantity, Sum, Total. - Cutlist — Manufacturer, Part Number, Source, Target, Length, Cut Length, Quantity. - Pin Configuration — Pin, Description, Contact, Wire Seal / Cavity Plug, Network, Wire, Color Code, Destination. A part's series is not a column of its own, so it cannot be turned off separately: it travels with the description in the BOM, and sits beside the contact, seal and wire parts in the Pin Configuration table. Tip: Fewer columns means wider cells. Dropping Unit Price, Sum and Total from the BOM is both what makes a document safe to hand out and what makes it readable. ### Running the export Start the export and a progress indicator names what it is working on — preparing the design layout, generating the schematic, building the bill of materials, creating the cut list. The PDF downloads when it finishes. Export runs entirely on your own machine, so it works offline and nothing about the project is sent anywhere to produce it. ### What the PDF looks like - Filename — the project name. - Page size — landscape A4. - Title block — every page carries the project name, the sheet name and the date. - Page numbering — page X of Y on every page. - Layout — each view starts on a new page; canvas captures fill the page inside the title block; a table longer than a page continues with its column headers repeated; each sheet's views are grouped together. The canvas captures cover the full extent of the drawing, not what is currently on screen, so the zoom level you happen to be at makes no difference. ### Common combinations - Full documentation — every view, every sheet. For the archive or for a customer handover. - Production package — BOM and Cutlist only, with Unit Price, Sum and Total turned off. Everything the bench needs and nothing it should not have. - Design review — Design Layout and Schematic Wiring only. A visual document for a review meeting. - Assembly instructions — Pin Configuration plus Design Layout, so the person crimping can see both the table and where the connector sits. ### Before you export 1. Clear the design rule checks first, or at least read them. A missing cable length is blank in the cut list, and an unpriced part quietly contributes nothing to the total. 2. Check the units in Project settings. The PDF uses whatever is set there. 3. Name the sheets properly. They appear in the title blocks, and "Main Harness" is more use than "Sheet 1". 4. Look at the BOM in the app before exporting it. Anything wrong there is wrong in the document. --- ## Sheets and workspaces URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/sheets-and-workspaces/ A sheet is one drawing. A project is a set of them, and the derived outputs are computed per sheet and combined only at export. Above that sits the workspace — your personal account, or an organisation — which owns the projects and the parts library. ### The sheet bar The sheet bar runs along the bottom of the project workspace, one tab per sheet. - Click a tab to switch to it. - Double-click a tab, or right-click and choose Rename, to rename it. Enter saves, Escape cancels. - Right-click a tab for Rename and Delete. - + adds a sheet, subject to your plan's limit. In the desktop app the Sheet menu holds the same commands, plus next and previous sheet and the first nine sheets by name. Note: Component-type projects — the ones behind reusable components — have exactly one sheet, so they have no sheet bar. ### What a sheet holds Each sheet holds its own copy of everything: - Design components and cables. - Wiring connections and their control points. - The components instantiated from library parts. - Pin configuration for every one of them. - Cable labels and extra parts. - Shielded cable configurations. The BOM and cut list are computed for the sheet you are looking at. A PDF export is where several sheets end up in one document. Warning: Deleting a sheet permanently removes everything on it, and cannot be undone. The last sheet in a project cannot be deleted. ### Mating connectors across sheets Sheets are independent, but a harness is not — a connector on the engine sheet plugs into one on the cabin sheet. Mating is how you record that. 1. Select a connector and open Mating Connector in its inspect panel, or from Pin Configuration. 2. Choose the connector it mates with. It can be on any sheet in the project. 3. The two are linked, and both show a mate badge on the canvas. The two connectors must have the same cavity count — that is the whole compatibility rule, and connectors that do not match are not offered. **What mating gives you** - A chip in the Pin Configuration header naming the mate and its sheet, which jumps straight to that connector's pin configuration. - Network names that propagate through the mate, so one signal keeps its name across the whole project rather than restarting at each sheet boundary. - Wire tracing that carries across the jump, so following a conductor onto another sheet keeps it highlighted when you land. - Off-sheet wire counts in the Wiring view selection panel, so a connection continuing elsewhere is not mistaken for a dead end. Note: A mate is a two-way link. If one half goes missing — the other connector is deleted, or its part changes cavity count — the design rule checks report it as a broken mate or a mate mismatch. ### When to use several sheets - Harness variants — one sheet per variant where they share a structure but differ in specific connections. - Vehicle zones — engine bay, cabin, boot, doors, mated to each other at the connectors that actually join them. - Subsystems — power distribution, sensor circuits, communication buses. - Revisions — keeping a previous state of a harness alongside the current one. The sheet limit is per plan: 1 on Free, 3 on Lite, unlimited on Pro and Team. See Pricing and plans. ### Workspaces A workspace owns projects, components and a parts library. There are two kinds. - Personal — yours. Your projects, your library, nobody else's. - Organisation — shared with its members. Everyone sees the same projects and the same parts library. Requires the Team plan. Switch between them from the workspace control in the header, or filter the Projects page by workspace. To move an existing project, open Project Properties and change Workspace. Note: Moving a project between workspaces needs a connection — the change goes through the server, so the control is disabled offline in the desktop app. Collaboration covers organisations, members and the shared library in full. --- ## Collaboration URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/collaboration/ An organisation is a shared workspace. Its members see the same projects and work from the same parts library, and changes reach everyone as they happen. It is the difference between one designer with a library and a team with a standard. ### Setting up an organisation 1. Open the workspace control in the header. 2. Choose Create Organization. 3. Give it a name. You become its admin. **Inviting people** 1. Open the organisation's settings. 2. Invite members by email address. 3. They get an email with a join link. Once someone joins they have access to every project the organisation owns and to its parts library. ### Switching workspace The workspace control switches between your personal workspace and any organisation you belong to. What you see — projects, components, library — follows that choice, and the Projects page can filter by workspace as well. ### Shared projects Create a project while an organisation is the active workspace and it belongs to the organisation from the start. That is the simplest route, and it means everyone has it from day one. **Moving an existing project** 1. Open the project. 2. Open Project Properties. 3. Change Workspace to the organisation. 4. Save. Warning: Moving a project into an organisation gives every member access to it. Moving it back out removes their access. Note: The workspace change goes through the server, so it needs a connection — the control is disabled offline in the desktop app. ### The shared library Each workspace has its own parts library, and an organisation's is shared. A part added by anyone is available to everyone, immediately, in every organisation project. - Your personal library stays separate and private. - The same connector added once serves every team project. - Editing a part changes it everywhere it is used, so prices and descriptions stay consistent. Tip: Have one person set up the standard connectors, wires, contacts and heat shrink colours before anyone starts designing. It is much easier than reconciling three people's near-duplicate parts later. ### Working as a team **Working at the same time** Several people can have the same project open. Changes made by one appear for the others as they happen — there is no save button and no sync step, and all four views update together. An assistant connected over the MCP server arrives the same way: its edits reach everyone in the project exactly as a colleague's do. **Splitting the work** - One person lays out the physical harness in the Design view. - Another works the connectivity in Pin Configuration and the Wiring view. - The design rule checks give both of them the same list of what is still outstanding. - The BOM is reviewed together for part accuracy and cost before anything is quoted. Note: In the desktop app, work done offline is queued and sent in order when you reconnect, so a colleague on a bad connection is not blocked — their changes simply arrive later. ### Access control - Admins manage membership — inviting and removing members — from the organisation's settings. - Members have full access to every project the organisation owns and to its library. - Everyone else has no access to either. Access is checked on every request, not only at sign-in, so removing someone takes effect immediately rather than at their next session. ### Billing Organisations are billed per seat on the Team plan: one seat per member, minimum two, monthly or annual. It is a separate subscription from your personal plan — being on Pro personally does not cover an organisation, and vice versa. The admin manages it through the Stripe billing portal, reached from the workspace's billing controls. Seats added mid-cycle are prorated; reductions apply at renewal. Warning: An organisation without an active Team subscription is read-only. Its projects can still be viewed and exported, but not edited, until the subscription is in place. See Pricing and plans. --- ## Project settings URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/project-settings/ Project properties is a short dialog with a long reach: four settings that decide how lengths are shown, how much wire is cut, what the BOM costs and how much heat shrink a marker uses. Set them before releasing anything to production. ### Opening it Open Project Properties from the actions panel, from the canvas context menu, or with Cmd/Ctrl + I in the desktop app. Everything here is per project. Two projects in the same workspace can use different units and different margins. ### Measurement units Metric or Imperial. It decides how every length in the app is displayed and entered: - Metric — millimetres, centimetres or metres, chosen by magnitude. - Imperial — fractional inches, such as 3 1/4 or 7/8. Note: Switching units never loses precision. Every length is stored in centimetres and inches at the same time, so this setting changes the display and nothing else. ### Cutlist multiplier The safety margin added to every wire length. Cut length is the base length times this number, and it defaults to 1.05 — five per cent. It covers termination length, routing slack and stripping waste. It also feeds the BOM: wire quantities are computed from the cut length, not the drawn length, so the BOM orders what you will actually consume. | Value | Effect | |---|---| | 1.0 | Exact drawn lengths, no margin. | | 1.05 | Five per cent — the default, and a reasonable starting point. | | 1.10 and above | For long harnesses where routing slack accumulates, or a process with generous strip lengths. | Warning: Changing this changes every cut length in the project at once. Set it before a cut list goes to the bench, not after. ### Price multiplier The markup factor applied to the BOM's Total column. Sum is the raw unit price times quantity; Total is that Sum times this multiplier. It defaults to 1.05. Tip: Set it to 1.0 when you want raw material cost — for internal costing or for comparing supplier quotes — and to your real markup when the document is going to a customer. ### Marker length How long one colour code band is. It defaults to 4 mm, or 0.75 inches in imperial units, and it is the only thing that converts a count of markers into a quantity of heat shrink in the BOM. Set it to whatever your process actually cuts. See Wire colours and marking. ### Name and workspace The same dialog holds the project's Name and its Workspace — the personal or organisation workspace that owns it. See Sheets and workspaces. Note: Changing the workspace needs a connection; the control is disabled offline in the desktop app. ### Deleting a project Delete at the foot of the dialog removes the project and everything in it: every sheet, every component, all the wiring and all the pin configuration. It asks for confirmation first. Warning: Deleting a project cannot be undone. Library parts survive it — they belong to the workspace, not the project — but nothing else does. ### What each setting touches | Setting | What it changes | |---|---| | Units | How lengths are displayed and entered, in the app and in a PDF export. | | Cutlist multiplier | Every cut length, and the wire quantities in the BOM. | | Price multiplier | The BOM's Total column and its grand total. | | Marker length | The heat shrink quantity reported in the BOM. | --- ## The MCP server URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/mcp-server/ The MCP server lets an AI assistant work inside your Wiring Studio account. Point Claude, ChatGPT, Codex or any other MCP client at one hosted address, sign in once in the browser, and the assistant can list your projects, read a sheet, place components, wire cavities, run the design rule checks and look at what it has drawn — as you, with exactly the access you already have. ### What it is The Model Context Protocol is a standard way for an AI assistant to call tools inside another application. Wiring Studio runs an MCP server at a fixed address, so there is nothing to install, host or keep running — you give a client the address, sign in, and the assistant has 59 tools covering the same project data you work with on the canvas. It acts as you. Every call is made under your own account, so the assistant sees the workspaces you belong to and nothing else, and its edits are your edits: they appear on the canvas immediately, and for everyone else in the project, through the same real-time sync a team works through and exactly as if you had drawn them yourself. Workspace, project and sheet are arguments on the tools, so the assistant has to say which sheet it is working on rather than inheriting whatever you happen to have open. Note: There is no API key to generate and no token to paste anywhere. The first time a client contacts the server it is turned away and told where to sign in, registers itself, and opens a browser window for the same Wiring Studio sign-in you use everywhere else. The client keeps the result — you never handle a credential. ### What you can do The 59 tools fall into ten groups. The read tools return structured data an assistant can reason about; the write tools change the project. | Group | Tools | |---|---| | Workspaces | list_workspaces | | Projects and sheets | list_projects, get_project, create_project, rename_project, create_sheet, rename_sheet, set_project_settings | | Parts library | search_parts, get_part, list_manufacturers, upsert_part | | Components | get_sheet, add_component, update_component, delete_component, set_pin_layout, set_mating_connectors, add_extra_part, update_extra_part, delete_extra_part | | Wiring and pins | list_wires, connect_wire, update_wire, delete_wire, set_twisted_pair, clear_twisted_pair, rename_network, set_pin, fill_pins, get_pin_config | | Cables, shielded cables and labels | list_cables, add_cable, update_cable, delete_cable, set_cable_layers, list_shielded_cables, add_shielded_cable, update_shielded_cable, delete_shielded_cable, add_label, update_label, delete_label | | Reports and rules | get_bom, get_cutlist, run_drc, list_drc_rules, set_drc_rules, auto_layout, derive_cables_from_wires | | Layout | get_layout, move_components, transform_components, set_route, split_cable, scale_layout | | Assemblies | insert_assembly, save_as_assembly | | Screenshots | screenshot_sheet | Names, arguments and descriptions travel over the connection itself, so the list your client shows you is the authoritative one. The table above is a map of the ground it covers, not a schema to code against. ### What to ask for The tool list is a map, not a suggestion. What follows is the work people actually hand over — the jobs that are slow because they are wide rather than difficult, where a person is the bottleneck only because somebody has to walk every row. Each one names the tools it leans on and the thing that will trip it up. The last two are not edits at all: they are questions you would otherwise answer by tracing the drawing by eye. **Fill the library from a catalogue** Getting a parts library populated is the wall most harness tools hit on day one: cavity counts, contact gauge ranges, seals and prices, typed in from supplier PDFs. Point an assistant at the catalogue or datasheet instead and it can write the parts in directly with upsert_part, one per part number, across any of the sixteen categories. Only the part number, category and manufacturer are required, and it needs no paid plan — a Free personal workspace can take a full catalogue. Warning: upsert_part replaces a part, it does not patch it. Anything left out goes back to its default, so a price-only update on a twelve-way connector silently resets it to one cavity and clears its mates in every project that used it. Read the part with get_part first and send the whole set of properties back. Part images and contact-arrangement drawings are not part of the tool surface at all, so an imported catalogue arrives without them. **Replace a part that has gone end of life** When a connector is discontinued the hard part is not choosing the replacement, it is finding every place the old one is used before one slips through into production. An assistant can walk list_projects, get_project and get_sheet, then repoint each use in turn: update_component for components, update_wire for wires, set_pin and fill_pins for contacts and seals, update_cable for coverings, update_label, update_extra_part and update_shielded_cable for the rest. Note: There is no single find-and-replace call, and each of those objects holds its own part reference, so a widely used part means one write per use against a limit of sixty calls a minute. Repointing a component changes which part it is, not how many cavities it has — swap a twelve-way for an eight-way and the wires on the cavities that no longer exist survive as errors. Finish with run_drc and fix what it names. **Build a project from your own spreadsheet** Excel import reads a workbook cold and infers what the columns mean. Your own wire list does not need inferring — you already know that column D is the cavity and that a dash in the reference means a splice. Write those conventions down once as a prompt or a saved skill, and an assistant can read the file on your terms and build the project with create_project, add_component, connect_wire, fill_pins, add_cable and add_label. Note: Parts have to exist before the components that use them, so run the catalogue pass first. create_project already returns a first sheet — calling create_sheet for it wastes a call and fails outright on Free, which allows one sheet per project. A project still being built by Excel import is read-only until it finishes, and get_project reports that as importing. **Re-price a library and re-quote** Prices go stale between revisions and a bill of materials retyped by hand goes stale faster. Price lives on the library part, which is shared by every project in the workspace, so one upsert_part per part propagates everywhere. get_bom and get_cutlist then report what the harness costs, and set_project_settings carries the per-project priceMultiplier and cutlistMultiplier that turn cost into a quote. Note: search_parts returns at most a hundred parts and has no pagination, so ask for one category at a time rather than for the library. The part-no-price and part-no-number checks are the quickest way to find what is blocking a clean quote — both look at the whole project, not one sheet. **Make the naming consistent** Signal names drift: a net gets renamed on one sheet and not the next, or a convention changes halfway through a programme. rename_network is project-scoped rather than sheet-scoped, so one call renames every wire in the net wherever it lives and reports how many it touched. Pair it with list_wires to audit first. It is worth running after any pass that repoints wire endpoints, since moving an end does not re-derive the net name. **Fix what the design rule checks find** Faults found at the crimp bench cost far more than faults found at the desk. run_drc returns every violation with its rule, severity, message and subject, and most rules have an edit behind them: cable-no-length goes to update_cable, contact-missing to fill_pins, part-no-price to upsert_part, cable-no-route to set_route or auto_layout. Ask for a pass and the assistant can triage the list and fix the ones that are mechanical. Note: Violations are located by name rather than by an internal id, which is the same vocabulary the write tools take. Wire subjects spell the endpoint with the cavity label, though, so fixing one usually needs get_pin_config to map the label back to the cavity number. At most a hundred violations come back in one call — the counts stay complete and truncated says when the list was cut — and a project over six hundred components is refused, because that check belongs in the app. **Reuse a sub-harness across programmes** Most teams redraw the same power branch or the same ground stud arrangement on every programme. save_as_assembly snapshots named components — or a whole sheet — with their wiring, pin assignments, shielded cables, labels and extra parts intact, and insert_assembly deep-copies it into any project at a position you give, reporting anything it had to rename to avoid a collision. Saving one counts against the reusable-component allowance on your plan, and inserting an assembly into a different workspace leaves its part references unresolved. **Turn a wire list into a drawing** A schematic that is electrically complete is still not something a bench can build from. derive_cables_from_wires creates a design edge everywhere wires run but no cable is drawn, add_cable and update_cable put real lengths on them, and scale_layout re-flows the sheet so what is drawn is proportional to what will be cut. auto_layout rearranges for legibility, split_cable inserts a branch point or an inline splice partway along a run, and screenshot_sheet shows you — and the assistant — what came out. **Trace a colour-coded wire** On the bench the question is never abstract: somebody is holding a red wire with two white bands and wants to know where the other end lands. list_wires returns every wiring edge on a sheet with both endpoints as a component name and a cavity number, along with the wire part it uses and the marking bands on it, so an assistant can find the run and tell you where it goes. get_pin_config turns the cavity number into the label printed on the connector, and screenshot_sheet points at it on the drawing. Wire colours and marking covers how the colours are set in the first place. Note: Colour is not on the wire, it is on the library part. list_wires gives you wirePartNumber, and the colour is the hex value in props.wire.color that get_part returns. search_parts matches part numbers, descriptions and manufacturers rather than colour, so asking for the red wire works when your wire parts say red somewhere in their description and needs the part number when they do not. The bands in colorCodePartNumbers are separate heat-shrink parts, and the colour on a twisted pair's group is the pair's own, not either wire's. **Answer what a network connects** A net is the question people actually ask of a harness: what else is on CAN-H, what shares this ground, what goes dark if this cavity is wrong. list_wires carries networkName on every edge, so an assistant can group a sheet's wires by net and read the members straight off it, with both endpoints already named. get_sheet gives each connector its mate, which is how a net leaves one sheet for the next. Note: There is no single call that returns a network. list_wires shows one sheet at a time, so a net that crosses a mated connector pair means one call per sheet and stitching the halves together — a mate joins pin to pin by number, including across sheets. Wires that were never named come back with networkName null and have to be walked endpoint to endpoint. Network names are not unique either, so two unrelated nets can answer to the same one. rename_network is the single net-wide operation, and it reports how many wires it touched. ### Before you start - Any plan can connect, Free included. There is no separate purchase and no MCP seat. - The assistant sees every workspace you belong to, personal and organisation alike. It cannot reach a workspace you are not a member of. - Writing into an organisation workspace needs the Team plan. Below it the organisation is read-only over MCP, exactly as it is in the app, and every edit is refused. - It reads and it writes. Creating, editing and deleting are all available, and none of it asks you to confirm a second time. - Your plan limits still apply to what it creates, refused in the same way and for the same reasons as in the app. See Pricing and plans. - A project still being built by Excel import is read-only until that import finishes. The client you connect is third-party software running under someone else's terms, and your project data goes to whichever model provider is behind it. What Wiring Studio itself records is set out in section 1.5 of the privacy policy, and the services involved are listed on the subprocessors page. Warning: Edits made over MCP are immediate. There is no dry run and no review step — the assistant writes straight into the live project, and everyone else in it sees the change at once. Point a client at a scratch project first and learn how it behaves before letting it near real work. ### Connect Claude Every client needs the same one thing, the server address. **Server URL** ```text https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp ``` **Claude Code** **Terminal** ```bash claude mcp add --scope user --transport http wiring-studio https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp ``` 1. Run the command above. --scope user makes the server available in every project on your machine. 2. In a session, type /mcp, choose wiring-studio and sign in. claude mcp login wiring-studio does the same from the terminal. 3. Ask Claude to list your workspaces, which is the cheapest way to confirm the connection works. Use --scope project instead and the server is written into a shareable .mcp.json in the repository, which colleagues approve and sign into with their own accounts. **.mcp.json** ```json { "mcpServers": { "wiring-studio": { "type": "http", "url": "https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp" } } } ``` **Claude Desktop and claude.ai** 1. Open Customize ▸ Connectors — on the web that is claude.ai/customize/connectors. 2. Click + and choose Add custom connector. 3. Name it wiring-studio, paste the server address, and leave the advanced settings empty. 4. Click Add, then complete the browser sign-in. 5. In a chat, open the + menu ▸ Connectors and switch wiring-studio on. Note: Custom connectors are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise, and Free allows one of them. On Team and Enterprise an owner adds the connector under Organization settings ▸ Connectors first; everyone else then clicks Connect and signs in as themselves. Tip: Claude reaches the server from Anthropic's cloud rather than from your own machine, which is why there is nothing to run locally and why the address has to be a public one. It is. ### Connect ChatGPT **ChatGPT** 1. Open Settings ▸ Security and login and turn Developer mode on. 2. Add a custom connector and give it the server address, https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp. 3. Complete the browser sign-in when it appears. Plus and Pro can turn developer mode on themselves. On Business, Enterprise and Edu a workspace admin has to enable it first, under Workspace Settings ▸ Permissions & Roles. Connectors in ChatGPT are available on the web only. Note: ChatGPT can only connect if its connector registers itself with our sign-in service the way the other clients on this page do, and that is not something we can confirm from our side. Treat these steps as a preview until it is: if the sign-in window never opens, the fault is the handshake rather than anything you have typed, and the other clients here are the dependable route in the meantime. **Codex CLI** **Terminal** ```bash codex mcp add wiring-studio --url https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp codex mcp login wiring-studio ``` The first command writes the entry below into ~/.codex/config.toml; you can equally write it by hand and then run the login command. **~/.codex/config.toml** ```toml [mcp_servers.wiring-studio] url = "https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp" ``` ### Other MCP clients Any client that speaks streamable HTTP MCP and OAuth 2.1 with dynamic client registration works. Give it the server address and it arranges the rest itself — no headers to set, no keys to store, and nothing to configure beyond the URL. **mcp.json** ```json { "mcpServers": { "wiring-studio": { "url": "https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp" } } } ``` - Cursor — the shape above, in ~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project or .cursor/mcp.json for one. - VS Code — .vscode/mcp.json, where the top-level key is servers rather than mcpServers, and the entry carries type: http beside the URL. - Windsurf — mcp_config.json, where the address goes under serverUrl rather than url. The first thing the server does with a new client is refuse it. That refusal carries the address of the sign-in service, and it is how the handshake begins — every client here handles it without being told. Seeing one in a log is not a failure. For a starting point to discover project tools and machine-readable documentation, see [API and developer resources](https://wiring.studio/docs/api/). ### Working with an agent An assistant finds its way in the same order you would. list_workspaces gives it the workspaces you belong to, list_projects the projects in one of them, get_project the sheets in a project, and get_sheet everything on a sheet — components, cavities, cables and wires. After that it has the names it needs to change anything. - "List my projects and tell me which ones have design rule violations." - "Add a 12-way connector to the engine sheet and wire cavity 1 through to the splice." - "Every wire between X1 and the splice should be black — fix the ones that are not." - "Produce the cut list for this project and tell me the three most expensive parts in the BOM." - "Trace the red wire out of X1 cavity 4 and tell me where it lands." - "What else is on the CAN-H network, and does any of it leave this sheet?" - "Rename the network carrying CAN-H and make sure it is twisted with CAN-L." - "Tidy up the layout on sheet 2 and show me what it looks like." **Names, not ids** Sheet-scoped tools address things by the names you already see: a component by its name from get_sheet, a library part by its part number. There is no internal identifier to hunt down and none to paste — which also means that renaming a component in the app changes how an assistant has to refer to it. **Leave alone or clear** Write tools follow one rule throughout. An argument the assistant leaves out is left alone; an argument it sets to null is cleared. That is the whole difference between not changing a label and removing one, and it is worth knowing when you read back what an assistant says it did. Tip: Ask for run_drc after a batch of edits, and for screenshot_sheet once the batch is done. The checks are the same ones the app runs, so an assistant that clears them is clearing what you would have seen on the design rule checks card — and a screenshot is the only way it can tell whether the layout it produced actually looks right. ### Limits and safety | Limit | What it means | |---|---| | Deletes are canvas objects only | Components, cables, wires, labels, extra parts and shielded cables. A library part, a project or a sheet can never be deleted over MCP — those stay things a person does in the app. | | Plan limits apply to creates | Refused exactly as they are in the app. Deletes are deliberately never plan-limited. See Pricing and plans. | | 60 tool calls a minute | Counted per person, across every client you have connected. Over the limit, the call comes back as an error telling the assistant to wait and try again. | | 6 screenshots a minute | screenshot_sheet has a budget of its own on top of the general one. A capture takes 10 to 40 seconds and returns a PNG whose longer side is between 512 and 4096 pixels, 1600 by default. | | 100 design rule violations | run_drc returns at most 100, and declines a project of more than 600 components outright. | | 100 search results | search_parts returns no more than that from the library at a time. | | Imports are read-only | A project being built by Excel import is closed to writes until it finishes. | screenshot_sheet is the one tool that goes further than the database: it signs a headless browser into your account, renders the canvas the way the app draws it, and signs that browser out again. The browser belongs to Cloudflare, listed on the subprocessors page. Warning: Nothing an assistant does is a draft. Every change is written to the live project and synced to everyone working in it at once, the same as a change you make yourself. ### Disconnecting Wiring Studio keeps no list of connected clients. The connection lives in the client, so the client is where you end it. **Terminal** ```bash claude mcp remove wiring-studio ``` - Claude Code — the command above, which deletes the stored sign-in along with the server entry. - Claude Desktop and claude.ai — remove the connector under Customize ▸ Connectors. On Team and Enterprise an owner removes it for the whole organisation. - ChatGPT — remove the custom connector in settings. - Everything else — delete the server's entry from the client's configuration file. Removing the connection discards the sign-in the client was holding, and there is nothing left on the Wiring Studio side to clean up. An account with no client pointed at it is simply an account no assistant can reach. --- ## API and developer resources URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/api/ Connect to MCP to work with harness projects. Read the Markdown documentation to understand the product. These are the starting points for agents and integrations. ### Discover project tools Connect an MCP client to **https://mcp.wiring.studio/mcp** and sign in with your Wiring Studio account. See [The MCP server](https://wiring.studio/docs/mcp-server/) for connection instructions and available capabilities. After connecting, call **tools/list** to discover the available tools and their input schemas. The server provides the current definitions for reading and editing projects, sheets, components and wiring, and generating reports. Tool calls use the signed-in account’s access and plan limits. There is no public REST API for project data. Use the MCP tools instead of constructing URLs against **https://app.wiring.studio/**. ### Discover HTTP resources Fetch [/openapi.json](https://wiring.studio/openapi.json) for an OpenAPI 3.1 description of the MCP connection and authentication endpoints, documentation URLs and discovery files. Individual project tools and their schemas are discovered through MCP with **tools/list**. ### Find product documentation | Resource | When to use it | | --- | --- | | [/llms.txt](https://wiring.studio/llms.txt) | Start here for a product overview and links to every documentation chapter. | | [/llms-full.txt](https://wiring.studio/llms-full.txt) | Read the entire documentation corpus in one request. | | [/docs/index.md](https://wiring.studio/docs/index.md) | Browse the documentation index as Markdown. | | [/sitemap.xml](https://wiring.studio/sitemap.xml) | Discover published page URLs. | | [/rss.xml](https://wiring.studio/rss.xml) | Read recent releases and product changes. | | [/robots.txt](https://wiring.studio/robots.txt) | Check the site’s crawl policy. | To read an individual page as Markdown, append **index.md** to its URL or send **Accept: text/markdown**. For example: **Terminal** ```bash curl https://wiring.studio/docs/design-view/index.md ``` ### Help users reach the right page For support, direct the user to the [support page](https://wiring.studio/support/). To subscribe to release notes, direct them to the [changelog](https://wiring.studio/changelog/). Both forms require browser verification. --- ## Keyboard shortcuts URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/keyboard-shortcuts/ Every shortcut in the app, grouped by where it applies. The canvas and mouse controls work everywhere; the view, sheet, project and tab shortcuts are desktop-only, because the browser has already claimed most of those chords for itself. ### Design canvas These work on the Design canvas in both apps. | Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Delete or Backspace | Delete the selection | | Cmd/Ctrl + Z | Undo | | Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Z | Redo | | Cmd/Ctrl + A | Select every component on the sheet | | Cmd/Ctrl + C | Copy the selection | | Cmd/Ctrl + V | Paste at the pointer | | Escape | See the note below | | Shift + click | Add or remove one component from the selection | | Shift + drag | Marquee select | Note: Escape resolves in order: it cancels a placement in progress; then, if a dialog is open, the dialog takes it; then it clears the selection; and finally it clears a pinned wire trace. So pressing it twice after tracing a wire clears the selection and then the trace. The actions panel keeps the most-used ones on screen under Shortcuts, so you do not have to come back here for them. ### Wiring canvas The Wiring view is driven by its context menus and its selection panel rather than by keys, and it has no undo of its own. | Action | What it does | |---|---| | Click a wire | Selects it, opens the panel, highlights its network | | Right-click the canvas | Add Splice, Diode, Resistor; Auto Route | | Right-click a wire | Twist, Ungroup | | Right-click a component | Pin Configuration, Pin Layout | | Drag a control point | Adjust the wire's path | ### Views and zoom Available in the desktop app, where each one also appears beside its command in the menu bar. | Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + 1 | Design view | | Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + 2 | Wiring view | | Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + 3 | BOM | | Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + 4 | Cutlist | | Cmd/Ctrl + = or Cmd/Ctrl + + | Zoom the canvas in | | Cmd/Ctrl + − | Zoom the canvas out | | Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + 0 | Fit the drawing to the screen | Note: Cmd/Ctrl + 0 is a different thing: it resets the zoom of the application window, not the canvas. Canvas zoom runs from 0.1× to 10×. ### Project and sheet commands Also desktop-only, and greyed out in the menu when they do not apply — a command is offered only when the current view can actually run it. | Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Cmd/Ctrl + D | Duplicate the selection | | Cmd/Ctrl + E | Open the export dialog | | Cmd/Ctrl + I | Open project properties | | Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + S | Save the selection as a component | | Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + N | Add a sheet | | Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + → | Next sheet | | Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + ← | Previous sheet | ### Tabs The desktop app opens each project in its own tab and answers to the chords a browser does. | Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Cmd/Ctrl + N or Cmd/Ctrl + T | New project in a new tab | | Cmd/Ctrl + W | Close the current tab | | Ctrl + Tab | Next tab | | Ctrl + Shift + Tab | Previous tab | | Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + ] or Ctrl + Page Down | Next tab | | Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + [ or Ctrl + Page Up | Previous tab | | Cmd/Ctrl + 1 to Cmd/Ctrl + 8 | Jump to that tab | | Cmd/Ctrl + 9 | Jump to the last tab | | Mouse action | Effect | |---|---| | Middle-click a tab | Close it | | Double-click a tab | Rename the project | | Drag a tab | Reorder | ### Canvas navigation | Action | Effect | |---|---| | Scroll wheel | Zoom, at 1.05× per increment | | Ctrl + scroll | Zoom, inverted | | Drag empty canvas | Pan the viewport | | Click empty canvas | Deselect everything | - Zoom range is 0.1× to 10× on both canvases. - The wheel steps by 1.05×; the keyboard shortcuts step by 1.2×, which is deliberately coarser because a trackpad fires the wheel dozens of times per gesture. - The Design grid is 40 px, the Wiring grid 20 px. Both are visual references — nothing snaps to either. - Each canvas keeps its own viewport, so switching views does not lose your place. ### Design canvas mouse actions | Action | Effect | |---|---| | Drag a component | Move it | | Click a connection point | Start drawing a cable | | Click the target point | Complete the cable | | Click a cable | Add a curve waypoint | | Double-click a waypoint | Remove it | | Drag a waypoint | Reshape the curve | | Drag a tangent handle | Change the curve direction at that point | | Drag a label | Reposition it relative to its component | | Hover a strand in a cable's cross-section | Trace that wire | | Click a strand | Pin the trace | ### Context menus | Where you right-click | What you get | |---|---| | Design canvas | Add Connector, Ring Terminal, Branch Point; Insert Component; Save Sheet as Component; Paste; Auto-Scale Layout; Show Details; Export; Project Properties | | A component | Properties, Pin Configuration, Mating Connector, Pin Layout (wiring only), Flip H, Flip V, Duplicate, Copy, Save as Component, Delete | | A cable | Set Length, Set Covering, Add Label, Add Branch Point, Reset Curve, Delete | | A multi-selection | Save as Component, Delete | | Wiring canvas | Add Splice, Diode, Resistor; Auto Route; Export; Project Properties | | A wire | Twist, Ungroup | | A sheet tab | Rename, Delete | ### Worth knowing - Undo immediately. If you delete the wrong component, Cmd/Ctrl + Z brings it and its wiring back. The history covers the whole session. - Right-click everything. Most of the app is reachable from a context menu, and the menu you get depends on what is under the cursor. - Zoom in for precision. Snap range is measured in screen distance, so zooming in makes connection points easier to hit. - Check the menu bar. On desktop, every shortcut on this page is displayed beside its command, so there is nothing to memorise. Tip: In the docs, Cmd/Ctrl + K puts the cursor in the search field at the top of any chapter. --- ## Pricing and plans URL: https://wiring.studio/docs/pricing-and-plans/ There are four plans. They differ on how much you can have and whether the AI features are available; the drawing, the wiring, the design rule checks, the BOM, the cut list and PDF export are the same on all of them, including Free. ### The plans | | Free | Lite | Pro | Team | |---|---|---|---|---| | Projects | 3 | 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited | | Sheets per project | 1 | 3 | Unlimited | Unlimited | | Reusable components | 5 | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited | | AI features | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Parts library | Personal | Personal | Personal | Shared | | Organisations | No | No | No | Yes | | Support | Community | Email | Priority | Priority | Note: Everything not in that table is on every plan: both canvases, pin configuration, Auto Route, design rule checks, shielded cables, the BOM and cut list, PDF export and the desktop app with its offline working. ### What the AI features are The AI features are the only capability a plan withholds. There are three of them, all in the parts library, and all optional: - Image search — finding a real photo of a part from its manufacturer and part number. - Image processing — cleaning an image into a side or top view. - Description generation — writing a part description from its identity. Excel import is also AI-driven and needs a paid plan. Warning: Auto Route is not an AI feature and is not restricted. It runs on your own machine and is available on Free, offline included. See Wiring view. ### Team and organisations Team is what an organisation runs on. It is billed per seat — one seat per member, minimum two — and is a separate subscription from your personal plan. - Every member sees every project the organisation owns. - The parts library is shared, so the whole team designs from one set of parts. - Seats added mid-cycle are prorated; reductions apply at renewal. See Collaboration for how organisations work. ### Hitting a limit Going over a limit never deletes anything. The affected projects become read-only: a banner appears at the top, creating and editing are blocked, and viewing and exporting still work. It happens when: - You have more projects, sheets or components than the plan allows — usually after a downgrade. - An organisation has no active Team subscription. To get out of it, upgrade, or delete enough to come back under the limit. Note: Creating and keeping are checked slightly differently. Creation is blocked once you are at the limit; existing work only goes read-only once you are over it. So a Free account with exactly three projects can still edit all three, but cannot make a fourth. ### Upgrading 1. You reach a limit, or open a feature your plan does not include. 2. A dialog explains which restriction you have hit. 3. Choose a plan and a billing interval — monthly or annual. 4. Complete checkout with Stripe. 5. The new limits apply immediately. There is no page to refresh. The subscription is confirmed over the open connection, so the app knows about it within seconds of checkout completing. Note: In the desktop app, checkout and the billing portal open in your ordinary web browser, and the new plan arrives back over the connection rather than through the browser. Both need a connection, so both are refused with a message when you are offline. Tip: Annual billing costs less per month. The dialog shows both and the saving, so you can compare before choosing. ### Downgrading Downgrade at any time through the Stripe billing portal. Nothing is deleted: if your usage is above the new plan's limits, the affected projects or components go read-only until you upgrade again or bring the count down. Tip: Check your project, sheet and component counts against the target plan before downgrading, so you know in advance what will be affected.