Wiring Diagrams, Looming and Tagging

[NeoMorph]

Been looking at a bunch of the wiring pics for your panels and went "EEEK!" as if it was me I would lose track of the wiring after 2 weeks.

You see, I have this common problem called Red/Green colour blindness that a lot of males suffer from. As Cockpit Building is primarily a male occupation I would have thought that more people would have tagged their wires for later modifications.

You see, I use multiple colour wires and I get confused even with phone wires... I tend to use primary coloured wire most of the time and use a slip on number tag (or did when I was building my home automation system mark 3... I went RF in mark 4 so it was less of a problem).

If you use the wire tags it makes wiring diagrams a lot more use for if something needs changing years down the road. For example I had one wire pinched somewhere and I traced it through the skirting boards because each wire had a tag every few feet and used a pin and a multimeter to find the break in the correct wire. Now if I hadn't tagged the wires it would have meant a lot more hassle.

Now I do know there are new fangled wire checking multimeters that help do it for you but they are expensive generally. That's when I realised that you could probably mod a LAN wiring tester to do the same thing (because they are pretty much the same thing anyway). Not perfect but it does help with data wiring (like switches on a home cockpit).

I still tag wires when I need to (because it is easier to follow on a wiring diagram years later even).

How do you guys loom these days... ie how do you keep your wiring tidy? I was taught the old, old continuous lacing method. I see a lot of people use cable ties these day (as it's a lot quicker). Problem is, when you need to access a wire that is loomed with cable ties it is really easy to cut the other cables too, it seems to me.

Sorry if I am asking a lot of questions... When I research I tend to log everything heh... "Prior Planning Provides P*** Poor Performance" and all that. I tend to spec out each problem area and make sure it all works out in my head. Thank god for FreeMind is all I can say.

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Cutting edge of the dike always faces to the outside of the cable when removing zip ties.

Stock up on zip ties is all I can say. Tying the traditional way makes for a great looking cable but it's not so great if you have to start checking wires or adding to the cable.

[NeoMorph]

You know that NASA actually use spot ties now (they used to use the old method that I mentioned).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cable-lacing-nasa-style-spot-ties.jpg

That actually is harder to do than marine hitching. I wonder why they don't use cable ties...