How to Automate Overhead Line Electrification (OLE) Modelling in Revit

Overhead line electrification (OLE) design has traditionally meant slow, manual drafting: hand-placed structures, endless cross-section redraws, and schedules built by copying numbers between spreadsheets and CAD. For rail projects with hundreds of structures per kilometre, that manual approach doesn't scale — and it's where most schedule risk and human error creeps in.

Why manual OLE modelling doesn't scale

On a typical electrification project, engineers are placing masts, cantilevers, ancillaries and wires structure by structure, then manually generating cross-sections, dimensioning, and allocation tables for each one. A few recurring problems show up on almost every project:

• Track alignment data has to be re-entered or redrawn instead of imported directly.

• Cross-sections, dimensioning and levels are produced sheet-by-sheet by hand.

• Foundation schedules and dropper-length reports are compiled manually in Excel, with all the transcription risk that involves.

• Design changes mean re-touching every affected structure, cantilever and wire run individually.

How to automate OLE modelling in Revit

This is exactly the gap ami.OLE, our Overhead Line Electrification add-in for Autodesk Revit, is built to close. Instead of modelling and documenting OLE assets as separate manual steps, it automates the full workflow inside a single Revit model:

1. Import track alignment directly into Revit through the alignment panel, instead of redrawing it.

2. Recreate existing OLE structures as asset-rich 3D geometry from existing drawing data, for brownfield and renewal projects.

3. Lay out and model new structures — foundations, masts, cantilevers, ancillary brackets, anchors and wires — with alignment-based placement for accurate spacing.

4. Automate documentation: cross-section generation, dimensioning, levels, allocation tables and cantilever tube length reports, exportable straight to Excel.

5. Produce a BIM-compatible digital twin model suitable for network management and maintenance once the asset is built.

Because everything lives in one Revit model, design changes propagate through the linked structures, cantilevers and wires instead of requiring a rebuild of each drawing by hand.

Getting started

ami.OLE runs on Revit 2022 and later, with an interface built around prompts rather than code, so no programming knowledge is required to get productive with it. If you want to see it against your own alignment data, explore ami.OLE or request a 14-day trial.