help · Masts and parts

Catalogue

Add and change your company's parts, profiles, foundations, wires and catenaries - for accounts that edit the catalogue.

The catalogue holds what the calculation uses: the parts with their weights and wind loads, the mast profiles and the foundations - one set per company. Accounts that edit the catalogue open it from the mast image: Edit parts - the book symbol at the end of the toolbar (Mast image) shows the parts of the project's set; Back returns to the mast image. Save your work on the mast image first - the page asks if something is unsaved. vdp Software Tools makes an account a catalogue editor, and the licence plan must include the own catalogue (Licence plans).

The tables

Choose the table at the top and your set under Set. The list shows every entry with its values and in how many places it is used. Materials are shared by every company; only vdp Software Tools changes them.

Wires and catenaries

Wires, catenaries and wire loads belong to WIRE and to the railways: they are changed by the catalogue editors of a licence with Own wires and wire loads (the plan WIRE Railway), in the railway's own set - one of the account's WIRE sets. Everyone else uses the standard entries and those of their sets, without changing them. The railways open these tables from the WIRE page with Edit your wires.

Wires and catenaries are yours to define, every kind: single conductors, messengers, contact wires, and catenaries built from them. The list also shows the standard entries, marked Standard: they are shared by every company and kept up to date by vdp Software Tools. You can look at a standard entry but not change it - Copy into my set puts a copy into your set, which you then change as you need.

  • A wire is entered in the units shown beside each field: the weight per metre in N/m (kg/m × 9.80665), the real cross-section in m², the diameter in mm, the elastic modulus in N/m² and the thermal expansion in 1/K. A contact wire needs no elastic modulus or thermal expansion: its tension is held constant by the weights, so they enter no formula - write two hyphens.
  • A catenary is built, not typed: choose its messenger and its contact wire, enter the weight of the droppers and clamps (SBB: 0.706 N/m) and the remaining section of the worn contact wire (0.7 = 30 % worn). Its weights are calculated from the two wires every time - change a wire, and every catenary built from it follows. The typical tensions are optional; they will fill the sag calculator.

Derived values, checks and the preview

Beside the fields the page shows what follows from the values:

  • the derived values - for a wire its mass, density and section against the circle of its diameter; for a catenary its weight with the new and with the worn contact wire, each with the numbers that make it;
  • the plausibility checks - the density for the material, the section against the diameter, the elastic modulus and the thermal expansion. They only warn: a special conductor may be unusual on purpose;
  • a preview calculated by the sag engine for a level 50 m span: the N-FL tension table from -20 to 80 °C with its chart, the R-FL sag and vertical force (new, worn, with ice), or a single conductor's tensions. Where an entry has no typical tensions, the preview uses reference values and says so.

Check values recalculates all of this from the values in the fields without saving - try a value before you keep it.

Adding and changing

New entry adds an entry; the edit button of a row changes it. Required fields are marked; numbers may be written with a decimal comma. An entry of the same name and type cannot exist twice in a set.

Entries that are in use

A project keeps a part by its number, and a material, profile, foundation or wire by its name; a catenary keeps its wires by their number. Changing the name of a part is safe; the name of a material, profile, foundation or wire that a project uses stays as it is. Changing its values changes the results of every iteration that uses it, the next time it is calculated: the page says how many and which, and you confirm with I understand that the results of these iterations change. Delete removes an entry that nothing uses - a wire that a catenary is built from stays.

Every change applies at once - also in the other tools - and is recorded with the values before and after.

Please confirm