Atlas Tube

About Atlas Tube

Atlas Tube produces the broadest range of steel hollow structural sections (HSS) and ERW pipe piles in North America. Founded in 1984, the company has grown 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 Jumbo 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.

The challenge

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.

Atlas Tube, as North America's largest producer of structural steel HSS and part of Zekelman Industries, understood this better than most. 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."

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.

Why Calcs.com: engineer-to-engineer collaboration

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. Education alone wouldn't scale to reach the thousands of engineers 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."

When Atlas Tube met Calcs.com in 2024, it became clear that Calcs.com was the partner they were looking for. Calcs.com could remove friction from connection design without asking engineers to change how they worked - because Calcs.com has actual structural engineers building and updating the calculators themselves.

"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."

Rick Sebok, Chief Marketing Officer

From cautious beta to comprehensive launch

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. 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, delivered before 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 early 2025, we have 2,500+ users and weekly design activity continues to increase."

That early traction gave Atlas Tube confidence to invest further. Six months later, the Connections Hub had grown to 144 connection types based on AISC and CISC standards.

Key outcomes

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.

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.

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, is how Atlas Tube moved from talking about HSS potential to actively shaping how it's designed across North America.