Since the beginning of time, people have been asking, how can I do multiple things at once? PVcase Ground Mount has also asked this question. Our new Iteration engine allows you to do just that - try out many design scenarios simultaneously to find the best one faster. Just how many designs and how fast? We can accommodate up to 100 scenarios, but it will depend your CPU's speed and number of cores, just how long it takes.

Where

The new Capacity Iteration can be found on the PVcase Ground Mount ribbon, right beside Generation.

How

After opening the Window, you can select the PV areas for generation. You will be prompted to add alignment lines if none exist already.

You can iterate by both tilt and pitch for Fixed Tilt and EW, whereas Trackers only allow pitch. You can set upper and lower limits and a step size for the iterations. The generation is calculated based on the settings in Frame and park settings. So if you have, for example, azimuths, variable pitch, or alignments selected, these will be respected. Hit the iterate button to calculate the scenarios. You can track the progress of the calculations in the window.

Once completed, you will notice that nothing is yet rendered into the AutoCAD model space. You can choose which scenario you want to generate. Hit the generate button, and the PV layout will be completed in the usual way. Want to try a different method? Hit generate again, and the PV layout will be updated.

If there are some scenarios that you would like to keep for later, you can pin them to the top of the scenario list. Even if you rerun the iteration, these pinned scenarios will remain saved with the drawing.

Finally, if you use PVcase Yield, you can export as many scenarios as you want directly to the Yield interface. The data is securely transferred to your Yield account — no need to generate, export, or move files around.

We understand that visualizing ground grading output can be difficult. So this 3D viewer should make that part easier. The whole plant and the proposed terrain are loaded into your default web browser and shown in a simple 3D view. You can even change the sun position to see how the shading will affect your PV layout. In addition to the Export to CSV function introduced last release, we hope that our ground grading feature has become more useful and easier to understand.

Where

Under Civil Analysis, choose Ground Grading.

How

Perform ground grading actions as usual, and hit Export 3D view (beta). It may take a few seconds to transfer the data, after which the viewer will then load in your default web browser.

When we introduced the ground coverage ratio (GCR) to our tool, it was based on the ratio of PV modules area to ground area. After speaking to several of you, we have decided to update the definition of the GCR. We will now follow the industry standard of frame width (L) ratio to row pitch (R). Our old calculation will now be known as "Area Coverage" and will still be available in the Layout Information under this name. Thanks to everyone who suggested this change!