Power Line Systems, Inc.


Power Line Systems November 1998 newsletter:

It is Fall in Madison, which means that it is time for the latest edition of the quarterly Power Line Systems newsletter. While the leaves have been turning colors here, we have been busy turning out new features. We have a new version of SAPS that reduces analysis time by 27% while greatly increasing the number of elements allowed. We've improved the EIA implementation in TOWER to check for a number of common modeling errors. Version 5.00 of G-MAST is now in alpha test and PLS-CADD has faster bitmaps and TINs.

The alpha test version of G-MAST is the first in a new generation of structure applications (version 5) that we have been working on for more than a year. This generation will include such significant improvements as customizable reports, the capability to automatically create structure models that take advantage of interactions between allowable wind and weight spans and the capability to undo the last command. We also completely revamped insulators so that they use an insulator library, are more flexible and can contribute to the structure's wind and weight loading. The new applications use an improved analysis engine, which features additional precision, an end to array size A limitations (especially important for TOWER users), faster analysis (30-800%) and better error handling and reporting.

PLS-CADD has seen continued work on its Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) and bitmap handling. We've added a SiteWorks break line import feature and also improved the speed and functionality of our break line commands. Tuning of our TIN implementation yielded a speedup for all TIN operations from drawing to interpolating Z coordinates. In response to your feedback, we rewrote our bitmap routines (and some of Windows) to obtain a 25 times speedup for Plan & Profile sheet plotting with aerial photographs. We've also added a graph of structure usage to the check all and structure usage reports. Finally, we have a beta version that accounts for the effects of small induced line angles and span length variations caused by offsetting structures and attachment points from the centerline. This latest change simplifies the modeling of crossing spans and taps, see our Crossing Span Technical Note for details.

We will conclude with a number of miscellaneous items. The cost of our frame programs has been reduced from $2,000 to $1,000 and the cost of PLS-CADD's optimization option from $6,000 to $4,000. We attended the CIGRE meeting in September (see CIGRE 98). And, we are in the early stages of planning regional user group meetings for next year. We will likely hold three in the U.S. (a Central, Southeast and West Coast meeting) and we are exploring the possibility of Asian and European meetings. As more information on these meetings becomes available, we will report it in this newsletter. A number of you have asked if our software is year 2000 compliant and we would like to assure you that it is. For a statement of compliance and for a number of other technical notes please see the Technical Notes section of our News and Information page.

The current shipping versions of our software are as follows:

If you are interested in obtaining the current shipping release of any of our applications, please send us email at info@powline.com. As always, we welcome your suggestions and comments on our software.

Best Regards,

Staff of Power Line Systems, Inc.


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Power Line Systems, Inc.

610 N. Whitney Way, Suite 160, Madison, WI 53705, U.S.A.
Phone: (608) 238-2171, Fax: (608) 238-9241
Email: info@powline.com

© 2000 Power Line Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.