Abstract: During the design process of overhead transmission lines, manual calculation of tower leg coordinates and the generation of footprint Shapefile(SHP) files are inefficient and prone to errors. To address this issue, an automated mapping method based on open-source geographic information system (GIS) library is proposed, which not only establishes a geometric model for calculating tower leg coordinates but also utilizes the GDAL/OGR library to achieve batch generation and visualization from tower parameters to footprint SHP files. The application in a 500 kV transmission line project in Tibet demonstrates that the mean square error of the tower leg coordinates calculated by this method is 0.2 mm, which realizes the full process and automated tower position mapping, greatly improving work efficiency and data accuracy. Additionally, the software is easy to install and holds good promotion and application value.

Key words: overhead transmission line, tower location coordinates, automated mapping, open-source GIS (geographic information system) library