1. Jack vs plug. The "plug" side is the side that moves. The "jack" side is the side that doesn't move, or moves less. Think of a wall outlet: the "jack" is the outlet and the "plug" is the, well, plug.
2. Male housing vs female housing. The "male" housing goes into the "female" housing. Simple enough (if you don't have to explain it to your six-year-old...).
3. Male terminal vs female terminal. Again, the male goes into the female. But the little conductive pins don't have to (and, often, don't) match the gender of the housing itself. Molex Micro-Fit 3.0 is an excellent connector series that is notorious for having the terminal gender reversed from the housing gender. (And of course, both genders of crimp terminal are available.) This can cause problems if your communication is not perfect, but is still good enough that people actually think they can trust you.
4. Mating view vs wire view. "Mating view" is the view that you'd see if you were sitting on top of the mating connector, just before you got squished. "Cable view" is the view that you'd see if you were riding on the wiring behind the housing. They are mirror images of one another. It can be impossible to tell from a pinout drawing which view it is, even if there is a polarization feature (pin 1 marks are often OK, latches are usually not), so you HAVE to say. The "component view" vs "solder side view" distinction (among other names) is analogous for PCB mount connectors.
All of these issues are but a small part of what makes connectors utterly horrible to deal with. They have wasted more time, money, and effort than you will ever know.
Oh, I'm well aware. I've been making custom cables since high school back when Moses was a baby floating down the river.
If it weren't for all of the confusion, we wouldn't have lovely phrases like "fuck the truck" to help remember which end of the cable goes to the truck.
By hand you can usually only screw it up four or five times (for a cable there are only four ways to make). Sending out orders during New Product Introduction (so nobody knows what they're doing, and the answer to "how did that work last time?" is "in fact, that has never once in the history of human civilization worked") to a cable vendor that engineering (you) recommended be dropped due to quality problems including (but not limited to) "does not read the cable drawing", but management insisted we keep using because "we know how to order from them" (which was awful -- hand delivering parts, dealing with angry dogs in the way, drunken contacts at the vendor, and finding out that not only do their neighbors hate them (no surprise), but they managed to personally (personally!) get on the bad list with their FedEx guy; this is not easy) -- so that is no excuse)... that's how you get to the real pain.
Antennas are the external fertilization of connector sexing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Powerpole [2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rBkcZlOyPsc (NSFW unless you're in the trades)
- Is this a passion project? Commercial? Is it free? Will it always be free? What's the pricing model? - How do I get in contact? - Is there a company behind this? - If I start using this, can I hold on to/export the data in usable form?
Nate, thanks for sharing this - I actually posted this over here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44417587) a few days ago.
Regarding pricing, etc. - right now we're limiting users to 50 harnesses per account. There are no plans to charge for usage below this amount with the current features. I'm hoping people find the tool useful and we can use the feedback to improve it.
You can can get in touch here: info@splice-cad.com
Re mate vs wire side, that's just my preference - no ambiguity in orientation!
Couple more ideas for the landing page:
- Provide links to examples of generated exports in the formats you support, so folks can get a feel for how it might integrate into their workflow.
- The elements under "Everything You Need for Cable Design" animate as though they're interactive, but clicking them does nothing. Confused me for a bit.
- Page is very hard to read on mobile.
Other thoughts:
- I wasn't able to figure out how to pan the editor view around.
- Adding some sort of json/yaml/xml import/export would open up a lot more workflow possibilities. For example, I want to associate a harness version with a git tag, without needing to manually make a copy of a harness version in the app. Git (and/or github) integration would be great. Honestly, even an opaque blob export would be tolerable.
To pan, click and hold the right mouse key (or wheel) and drag. Are you trying this from a tablet?
There’s now a blog section on the site: https://splice-cad.com/#/blog/splice-updates-july-2025 where we’re documenting changes, fixes, and future plans. The feedback from this post has been very helpful.
all2•7mo ago