Atlas Tube
How Atlas Tube removed HSS design bottlenecks to increase market adoption.
Market adoption of building materials is not only limited by demand, it can also be limited by what engineers can design quickly and defend with confidence. If a product is harder to spec into real project constraints, it gets replaced with a familiar default. Scaling adoption means removing design friction, while not asking engineers to change how they work.
Atlas Tube understood this better than most. As North America's largest producer of structural steel Hollow Structural Sections (HSS) and part of Zekelman Industries, the company holds a leading market share and has grown its business from a single location with $2 million revenue to a multi-billion dollar manufacturer with six locations. But scale brought a different kind of challenge. At that level, simply selling more steel wasn't the answer.
The real mandate, as Chief Marketing Officer Rick Sebok describes it, was to "expand and shape the market by growing the total use of HSS."
That mandate coincides with engineering teams facing increasingly tighter design timelines, fewer experienced engineers, and little tolerance for new workflows. Under pressure, default design approaches win - even if new or better options exist. For years, engineers told Atlas Tube the same thing: HSS offered clear performance advantages, but connection design was the bottleneck.
Engineers usually don't learn connection design in school; they learn it on the job, under time pressure, and HSS connections can be particularly complex. If Atlas Tube wanted to grow adoption of HSS, it needed to remove that friction. Connection design was the constraint, and addressing it led Atlas Tube to add an engineering team to partner with Calcs.com and build HSS Connections HubTM.
Atlas Tube evaluated several paths: build software in-house, maintain complex spreadsheets, partner with traditional software vendors, or double down on education. Each introduced new risks.
Building in-house would pull the team away from their core strengths and create a long-term development and maintenance burden.
Traditional software vendors risked long timelines and rigid roadmaps, and, critically, would require significant engineering input on top of high development costs. Education alone wouldn't scale to reach the thousands of engineers that Atlas Tube wanted to support.
What Atlas Tube wanted was clear: engineer-led tools, speed, and credibility. "We didn't want engineers writing code. We wanted engineers designing tools in a low to no-code environment,” said Rick.
When Atlas Tube met Calcs.com in 2024, it became clear that Calcs.com was the partner they were looking for. What differentiated Calcs.com wasn't just collaboration, it was how the platform was architected.
Calcs.com could remove friction from connection design without asking engineers to change how they worked. Calcs.com has actual structural engineers building and updating the calculators themselves, using a no-code tool that the platform's engine is built on, thus avoiding the slow handoffs and delays typical of traditional software development and keeping the engineering intent intact.
As Rick put it:
“What made the difference was engineer-to-engineer collaboration. Our engineers could speak directly with the engineers building the tool at Calcs.com, which enabled speed and the improved outcomes.”
Atlas Tube’s initial plan was a cautious beta: launch a small number of connection calculators, test, and add more over time. Rick challenged his team on that approach.
"We wanted to create a stir in the market and a cautious beta wouldn’t do it," he said. "We had high confidence that functionality would reflect established design codes, but we needed to offer enough connection types to inspire engineers to try the offering."
The Calcs.com team met Rick's ambition with a revised scope and clear commitment: 20 HSS connection calculators, based on fabrication-friendly typical details, and a fixed deadline to share at the NASCC steel construction industry event in April 2025. Within three months, they delivered.
"We had 400 engineers using the tool within the first month. As of February 1st, we have 2,500+ users and weekly design activity continues to increase."
That early traction gave Atlas Tube confidence to invest further. The scope expanded six-fold from the initial plan. Six months later, the Connections Hub had grown to 144 connection types based on AISC and CISC standards and continues to expand.
That speed was a direct result of how the partnership worked. Atlas Tube’s engineers described connections the way they did in practice, developed typical details, and Calcs.com’s engineers translated that directly into usable tools. Decisions were made in days, not week-long review cycles, allowing the Hub to scale quickly without losing the trust of its engineer users. Importantly, when engineers request updates or new connections based on a specific project, the team is able to quickly provide enhancements and/or new connections in days and weeks, not months.
Engineering capability: 144 connection calculators covering a majority of the HSS connection types engineers need across US and Canadian standards, from the initial 20 at launch to comprehensive coverage within eight months.
Engineer adoption: 400 engineers in month one. More than 2,000 users within eight months, with weekly usage continuing to grow.
Design confidence and support: Engineers now access real-time connection design tools covering real-world needs, instead of static guidance and waiting sometimes a week for responses. Atlas Tube's team can walk engineers through live designs in real time, using the same tools.
Market and brand impact: The Hub gave Atlas Tube visibility into specification activity at the design stage, before fabricators place orders, transforming how they understand and serve their market. The shift is moving Atlas Tube from product supplier to solution provider.
Atlas Tube wasn't trying to build software. They were trying to change how engineers design with HSS. The Connections Hub became the lever for doing that at scale, shifting Atlas Tube’s role from product supplier to more of an active participant in the design process.
As Rick reflects:
"We have multiple engineers on our team supporting thousands of engineers every year. Couple this with the Calcs.com side where they have structural engineers developing the tools for these same engineers - it's one big brain trust focused on making an engineer's job and life just a bit easier.”
That engineer-led partnership, built on transparency, speed, and shared focus on real workflows and the end user, is how Atlas Tube moved from talking about HSS potential to actively shaping how it's designed across North America.
For manufacturers selling engineered products, the implication is clear: adoption isn’t just about performance or education. It’s about removing friction from design decisions and meeting engineers where their work really happens.
Atlas Tube produces the broadest range of steel hollow structural sections (HSS) and ERW pipe piles in North America. Founded in 1984 by the late Harry Zekelman, the company has grown his legacy through a dedication to customer service, lean manufacturing, employee empowerment, and cutting-edge technology.
Atlas offers the largest size range in the industry and is the only domestic producer of JumboTM HSS. With a team of structural engineers, Atlas provides design support for projects, as well as software and tools to support efficient HSS connection design and project cost optimization.
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