How can I model complex electrical props and assemble them together while not knowing their form?

shermanwaffle

Hello!

I'm currently working on a real-time 3D environment, but recently I've been creatively frustrated by my lack of understanding in certain elements. My scene includes many electrical boxes/cables densely tangled about, and I've attempted to model/deconstruct these things, but I'm still stuck. I really don't want to just model some generic electrical nonsense, of which is completely absurd in design, just to fill some space.

Here are some example images:



How do I tell a convincing story in an environment if I don't even know how these pieces actually work together? How can I research their form if reference is scarce? 

poopipe

Look up some wiring diagrams  I guess.  It's definitely what I'd do. 

I'm no electrician but what little I do know tells me that you can sort of think about it like water. It comes in one end runs through a bunch of filters and goes out the other.  
Make sure there's a flow across the circuits and it should look fairly plausible

ZacD

Start with the most obvious and clear cables, make sure those make sense, and then you can be more creative with the messy dangling ones. A lot of the repeating elements use the same/similar cable management, so you can do one, duplicate it over, and then add a tiny bit of randomization. 

It doesn't need to be 100% accurate, it just needs to suggest there was intention behind the layout. And that some of the more messy cables were repairs added later.