nPoles line design software

nPoles software was developed to replace and extend the POLES software which was developed by the Survey Group of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria.
POLES software enabled the quick capture of spatial data obtained in a field survey. This can be transformed and exported into AutoCAD for production of drawings for design and construction.
There were limitations to the POLES software. POLES was written in primitive HP Basic for use on DOS machines (initially programmable calculators) and therefore could not easily be used on modern field hardware nor in the office environment.
Industry changes especially in privatisation of the Victorian Electricity Industry brought about new requirements for the replacement software. Power companies no longer have a large group of technically competent design engineers available to assist the survey officers produce the final
designs.

Most design groups have limited technical experts, whom often have limited time to check minute details of every design.


nPoles was written from the ground up to reflect the latest concepts in surveying and IT. Capable of being compiled for almost any operating system or hardware.

It can use the AGD66, AGD84, GDA94 and GDA2020 co-ordinates systems to fit to existing grid data.

Timeline

  • 1986–1992 — POLES. POwer Lines Electronically Surveyed, developed within the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, read survey data straight from the instrument, modelled the line and produced the design, encoding the SECV’s stringing chart and footing practice.
  • 2000–2004 — the conductor calculations that nPoles is built on, from the SECV’s individual span design formulae.
  • 2003 — nPoles written from scratch, first to open and convert POLES files on a modern operating system, keeping the workflow Victorian designers had built up over decades.
  • 2006 — nPoles 1.0. Over the following years: the Surveying Calculator with total station integration, Pole Load with the SECV footing method, Clearances, the Stringing Chart builder, Chart Finder, schedules, CAD export and nPoles PPE.
  • From 2018 — 3D views for design review: Route View 3D, PoleSketch 3D and Clearance 3D.
  • 2026 — beyond the tablet: GNSS surveying, map layers across Australia and overseas, datums from GDA2020 to Swiss LV95, Undo, LandXML, and nPoles Field mini on the phone.

Earlier pages of this website

Kept when the site was renewed in September 2026, each with a note pointing to the page that replaced it.