VEC

The Vehicle Electric Container - Foundation for the Digitalization of your E/E Processes.

Get the most comprehensive standard for the digital representation of information created during the Electrical System Development Process.

Documentation Implementation Guidelines

Latest Release v2.0.2

Welcome to the ECAD Wiki

Everything about VEC & Friends

This is the place for all information about the standardization activities of the prostep ivip Association and the VDA in the field of wiring harness development and electrical systems design.

You will find here all specifications and recommendations published by the joint Project Group VES-WF together with additional background information, implementation guidelines and examples. Furthermore the ECAD Wiki is a source for articles dedicated to engineering processes and methods in the electrical system development and their related technologies.

If you find a bug, have a feature request or if you want to participate in the improvement and development process, then see here how you can contribute.

Featured Articles

Johannes Becker

Last updated on Dec 16, 2022 11 min read

Whitepaper KBL vs. VEC

What is the difference between KBL and VEC?

Why should I use the VEC?

What are the benefits?

Do I really need it?

This whitepaper tries to provide fact based information about the history of both, the origins and their differences and to enable the reader to form his or her own opinion. But beforehand it should be said, the VEC is much more than just a KBL 3.0.

News

VEC 2.0.0 released

Today we are proud to announce public availability of VEC 2.0.0. This is the next major step towards a consistent and complete model of the physical network of vehicles and the associated data. With this version the VEC switched to a semantic versioning scheme. As this version contains schema incompatible changes it is published as a new major version. A new recommendation is not published at this point. This version addresses about 60 Bugs and Features Requests.

Johannes Becker

Last updated on Mar 9, 2022

VEC 1.2.2 released

Due to a nasty bug in the VEC V1.2.0 Model we had to make a bug fix release. The TopologyZoneSpecification was missing its inheritance relationship to Specification. This rendered the TopologyZoneSpecification unusable, as only Specifications are contained in a DocumentVersion and in consequence in the resulting XML document. Additional the TopologyZoneAssignment has a recursive self-reference which makes its instantiation impossible as well. All VEC V1.2.0 are fully compatible with the VEC V1.2.2 schema since the fixed element could not be used anyways.

The model description and the release notes can be found here.

Johannes Becker

Last updated on Jan 25, 2022

New section "Sample Files" published in the ECAD-WIKI

We have added a new section Sample Files to the ECAD-WIKI and migrated the sample files which have already been available in the old ECAD-WIKI. We are currently working on making more sample data available in WIKI. You can help us with this. If you have sample data of a VEC or KBL implementation that can be made publicly available, we would be happy if you would provide us with it.

Johannes Becker

Last updated on Jan 24, 2022

KBL 2.5-SR1 & Implementation Guidlines released

We just released the first service release for KBL Version 2.5. This release just contains some bug fixes and a minor feature improvement. Please refer to the model description and the release notes, which can be found here. As this is just a service release, there will be no update / republication of the recommendation document. Additionally we published some new implementation guidelines, specifically for the KBL which can be found here.

Johannes Becker

Last updated on Jan 24, 2022

VEC 1.2.0 released

Despite the Corona Lockdown we were very active in the last weeks. The results of this work are now becoming visible step by step. After we already launched the ECAD Wiki in a completely new look a few weeks ago, we can now proudly announce that the VEC 1.2.0 is publicly available. This is the next major step towards a consistent and complete model of the physical network of vehicles and the associated data.

Johannes Becker

Last updated on Jan 24, 2022

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Featured Events

Max Ungerer, Johannes Becker

Mar 19, 2020 10:00 AM — 3:00 PM

VEC – Vehicle Electric Container

The 4-hour webinar offers an introduction to the VEC and its many possibilities.

In the first part, the motivation and the business case of the VEC as an open standard will be discussed. This is followed by the definition of the scope and an overview of the core concepts and fundamental principles of the VEC. The webinar is rounded off by a deep dive on the subject of component boxes / fuse & relay carriers and last but not least with an insight into the innovations introduced with VEC 1.2.

Project Groups

Organizational structures for the development & improvement of VEC & KBL.

Vehicle Electric Systems Workflow Forum

The VES-WF is an association of companies that are active in the field of wiring harness design and manufacturing.

The objective with regard to a model-based development process is the definition of an integrated and complete digital product model of the vehicle electric system.

ECAD Implementor Forum

The ECAD-IF is an association of tool manufacturers and vendors that implement the standards published by the VES-WF.

The objective is to support implementation projects and to ensure interoperability between the different platforms by establishing common test activities and publishing implementation guidelines.