Release Notes tell you what’s new in PVcase Ground Mount.
Online Terrain Import
Since the beginning of time, people have been wondering how to quickly and easily get 3D terrain into their photovoltaic designs. With this release, we allow our users to import basic topography from the Google global terrain database.
Where
In the PVcase ribbon, Import terrain button.
How
You can start off with an empty drawing or with an existing design.
Is your drawing geolocated already?
If yes, just hit Import terrain, and then draw the polyline around your chosen terrain area. The terrain will be imported, and set as active terrain in PVcase.
If you have not geolocated yet, don't worry, you can still hit the Import terrain icon. Ground Mount will guide you through the process. To specify the location, enter the name of the nearest town to your site. Select the correct option, and click on the map to specify the correct location.
If you have an existing drawing, we recommend to make this an easily identifiable reference point, such as a nearby house. Hit OK to continue.
You will now be asked to specify this same point in your model space. It's up to you where it goes. For a new drawing, it can be 0,0. For an existing drawing, you choose the matching reference point that you specified earlier.
The AutoCAD Georeference point (red circle) will be placed for you. The default coordinate system is UTM84. Advanced users can modify this in the AutoCAD Geolocation ribbon tab.
Draw the polyline around your chosen terrain area. The terrain will be imported, and set as the active terrain in PVcase.
Once that juicy terrain is imported, you can visualize it with Terrain Mesh, place some frames on it with Generate, analyze and grade it with Civil Analysis.
At present, terrain import is limited to a 20 m x 20 m horizontal resolution (50 ft x 50 ft). We have also limited the size of each terrain import request to 100 ha (1.2 million square yards) to avoid overloading the terrain server.
Dual Row Tracker side angle display
Thanks to your feedback, we have a visualization improvement to the Dual Row tracker generation type.
After generation, it is not clear what is the East-West angle between the frames. We added some more detail, so you can see what is going on here.
Where
In the PVcase ribbon, hit Civil Analysis and then go to Slope Analysis.
How
After running Show details, the Frame orientation angles will be shown as requested in the North-South angle. In addition, if Dual Row trackers have been generated, the East-West angles will be shown above the motor drive line.