Implementation of a software tool for automatic generation of harness routing for spacecraft applications

Harness routing is one of the most time-consuming and error-prone processes among the design phases of a spacecraft project. In fact, the designer should take into account numerous constraints of electromagnetic and spatial nature, such as interferences between digital and analog signals or modules and elements that may constitute obstacles to unravelling of cables. The objective of this work is to create a software tool that, starting from a CAD model, allows the automation of the cabling routing process. Automation makes the process more responsive to changes and gives the designer a clearer idea of the final result. The routing problem was approached as an optimisation problem and implemented accordingly in the software. Optimisation is carried out trying to minimise the cable length, modelling obstacles and electromagnetic constraints with penalties if the cable does not respect them. An initial local optimisation is performed with a pathfinding algorithm that, working on the spatial data of an STL file, searches for the minimum path between the start and the end point. The result is processed by an optimisation algorithm that moves the points found during the local optimization freely in space, allowing a global minimum to be reached. In the last phase of this work, a graphical user interface was implemented to improve the user experience and to guarantee the user interaction with the input data and the results to be displayed.