Based on the use of dedicated software tools, Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) techniques are able to capture and reuse engineering product and process knowledge to reduce time and cost during product development. In this paper a conceptual design of an automatic wire harness routing application is proposed, based on KBE. As the core of this application, the wire harness routing algorithm is discussed in detail. Through comparison with related methods and existing algorithms, a suitable algorithm, named A* is selected. In order to comply with the complex aircraft specific routing environments, the selected algorithm is enhanced with so-called wall-attraction capabilities. The resulting algorithm is called the wall-attraction A* (W*) algorithm, and features a settable parameter that controls the balance between performance and admissibility of the solution. By conducting a set of experiments the influencing parameter is optimized. A case study is finally presented, featuring a conceptual aircraft environment that validates the above theories. Applying the W* algorithm, the wire harness routing application can connect any source and destination nodes satisfying according the relevant constraints meanwhile the valuable time and resources are saved.
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