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Correlating Alcoa SAG10^® Cable Data with PLS-CADD Cable Data

Extracting cable data from Alcoa SAG10^® for use in PLS-CADD (and PLS-CADD/Lite) is simple. This TechNote discusses how to do this from within both the Windows version of SAG10^® as well as with the DOS based ADD.EXE program from older Windows and DOS versions of SAG10^®.

First, we'll cover the approach required by the Windows versions of SAG10^®. From within SAG10^®, click on the Conductor Selection button and you will be taken to the Conductor Selection dialog box. Find the type of conductor first by clicking on the applicable radio button on the left side and then scroll through the list to find the conductor data that you wish to use in PLS-CADD. Once you have this cable selected, be sure and click on the "Lookup Wire Data" to bring the data up on the screen. This screen will give you the cable cross sectional area, diameter, unit weight, RTS (Ultimate Tension) area and the "Curve Number". The corresponding data can easily be entered into your cable data in PLS-CADD by just selecting Sections / Edit Cable Data and then either picking an existing cable file to modify or by typing a new name to add to your library. The screen shots below illustrate the SAG10^® Conductor Selection and corresponding PLS-CADD Cable Data dialog boxes, complete with colored circles indicating the data shared between the two programs.

Once you have entered the above properties, you will need to get the stress-strain values. SAG10^® refers to these values as "Curve Numbers", so you will need to look them up by clicking on the "New S-S Chart" check box at the bottom of the SAG10^® Conductor Selection dialog box and then find the Chart Number for your cable. Once you find it, you'll have to click on the "View Chart" button to refresh the screen and you'll now see the rest of the numbers that you need to complete the PLS-CADD Cable Data dialog box. Below, you can see colored circles indicating data shared between the two programs. Notice that no conversions are necessary (assuming you are using U.S. units in PLS-CADD).

That's it! You are now ready to use the cable in PLS-CADD or PLS-CADD/Lite and if you set all of the parameters the same, you will get the same answers in PLS-CADD as you did in SAG10^®. See our TechNote on Making PLS-CADD and PLS-CADD/Lite match Alcoa SAG10^® if you have any questions on how to do this. The thermal rating properties are not required unless you will be using one of the thermal rating functions of PLS-CADD. If you need these properties, we would recommend consulting your cable manufacturer or using the Southwire Conductor Manual, which can be requested from http://www.southwire.com.

Now, let's cover this same process using the DOS program ADD.EXE that was included in some older Windows versions of SAG10^® as well as the original DOS program from years ago.

First, find the ADD.EXE program, which is usually in the same folder as the SAG10^®.EXE program and execute the program. You will be presented with an options list in a DOS window. Much like the windows version, you will need to first determine the cable type you are looking for and then find it in the list of cables. (Hint: Get ready to hit the "pause" key quickly as it will scroll through all of them rather rapidly and you will need to stop on the cable of your choice. Also, some later Windows versions will allow you to maximize the DOS window and scroll back up the list to find your conductor). Once you locate your conductor, the screen shots below will show how the data correlates between the two programs - again, colored circles indicate corresponding data.

The last row in the cable data in the ADD.EXE program is the Chart Number. You will now need to look up that data to plug it into PLS-CADD to complete your cable data. The ADD.EXE program will always return to the first screen and you should notice that Option 18 will allow you to look at the SAG10^®.PGM file, which contains all of the Stress-Strain values. Select the "c" option to View One Chart and then type in the chart number you want to look up. A sample chart below illustrates with colored circles, which values correspond.

That is all that is required to create a PLS-CADD cable file from the corresponding data in SAG10^®. One word of caution - you should always consult with your cable manufacturer for their own cable data, as many of them use different data than that supplied with SAG10^®. As you can see from above, the data that they need to give you would be no different than what they would give you to run SAG10^®, so there isn't any reason why they cannot provide it to you. If your manufacturer has any questions, please have them contact us. We will assist them in getting all of their cable data into a PLS-CADD ready format and we'll even add them to our on-line library here for all of their customers to download and use.

SAG10^® is a registered trademark of Alcoa Fujikura Ltd.