Design and detail transmission towers more efficiently with PowerPack for Advance Steel, an aid to sustainability

written by Philippe Bonneau and John Bennett

Designing transmission towers for supporting high-voltage electric lines to connect energy-distributed generation plants is a challenge. It involves engineering, detailing, fabrication, and erection considerations, all aimed at providing reliable, safe, and efficient electrical transmission. In addition, it can minimize adverse impacts on the environment and communities, aiding a sustainable future for all.

Transmission Tower Designer is a new tool in PowerPack for Advance Steel, which offers powerful 3D parametric design capabilities.

With it, Autodesk Advance Steel users can create various components of a transmission tower in 3D, such as the tower legs, crossarms, bracing, and other structural elements.

This tool provides several features to control the arrangement of the tower, combined with several bracing schemes within the overall structure.

Towers:  Example tower and dialog box

Key Advantages

Transmission Tower Designer combines a series of macro elements to control the complex structure associated with towers:

• Automation of tower creation.
• Numerous bracing schemas.
• Multiple options for tower configuration. Multiple section size selection, combined with multiple alignment options.
• Library for standard configurations.
• Multiple locations enabled using Advance Steel copy tools.

The tower macro is based upon the following basic schema for construction . . .

Towers: Cage and segments schemas

. . . with additional features for cross arms and tower top options.

Towers: Overall arrangements

The Transmission Tower macro is based upon a rectangular base plan arrangement, then a series of cages and segments. There is an option to apply bracing elements within the fields of those segments, based upon several divisions between the fields.

Following are useful definitions:

Cages: Main parts of the tower body which have different slopes.

Segments: Cage divisions – the number of segments of a cage is equal to the number of leg divisions.

Fields: Equal segment divisions made by the selected bracing system.

Divisions: Equal parts of a field made by the web bracings (above and below the horizontal) for XBS and KS types of vertical bracing.

The main cage arrangements can be sloped or vertical or a combination of each type, based upon the cage segment.

There are elements in the macro for the creation and placement of tower arms and a tower top element, including multiple variations of these configurations.

 

Command Location

The Tower Designer command is located under the Structures Vault palette, with a specific tab for Tower Designers. Select this and then the Command button to start the Tower Designer command. The creation of the tower is based upon the current UCS 0,0,0 location; typically a user would start at WCS.

Towers: Tower Designer command button

Product Help

Check the Product Help for full documentation of the Transmission Tower Designer tool in PowerPack for Advance Steel.

PowerPack for Advance Steel (graitec.com)

Towers:  Online help page

Try It Yourself

To complement this, there is a guided walkthrough, which is available under the ‘Online resources’ on ‘How to use Towers’:

how-to-use-towers.pdf (graitec.com)

The user guide explains how to achieve a tower configuration and explores the basics of the macro through the placement of a series of elements.

There are many other combinations and possibilities within the current tool, so this guide is only the starting point for the user to explore them.

Watch This 3-minute Video to Learn More

Discover how you can easily model Transmission Towers in Advance Steel with this video showing how to use the dedicated Tower Designer tool in PowerPack for Advance Steel:

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