Civil analysis — Slope analysis

In PVcase Ground Mount, you can perform slope analysis as the initial step in civil analysis. This feature tests your PV area against defined slope limits (North/South for trackers, East/West for fixed-tilt) and highlights frames that exceed the allowed angles. 

It helps ensure your PV frame layout complies with terrain and project-specific slope constraints and marks non-compliant structures for correction.
 

To start working on the civil analysis, open the Civil analysis menu in the Tools section. 

The first tab in the Civil analysis menu is for performing slope analysis. To start, select your PV area.

Slope analysis for single-axis trackers

Slope limits

Once you select the area, you can specify the slope limits you want to test. Since this is a single-axis tracker design, you can define slope limits for the north and south orientations. In this example, it's set to 6% north and 12% south.

Next, click Indicate, and the software will color frames that fall outside the allowed limits. Frames exceeding the allowed north slope will be marked with red, while frames exceeding the allowed south slope will be marked with yellow.

Once the affected frames are highlighted, click Show details to see the exact slope angle or percentage for the frames in the area.

You can switch between slope units in the PVcase Layout generation settings menu.

Front view

You can have a closer look at the slope angles and how they affect the frames by creating a front-view projection of the frames and terrain

 

To create a Front view, open the drop-down menu (next to Cross-section) and select Front view. You can now choose between Manual or Automatic Front view.

Option 1: Manual Front View

1. Click Draw section and draw your front-view line through the middle of the trackers.
2. Extend the line to the end of the frames.
3. Click to place your endpoint.
4. Click where you want to position the Front view section in your drawing.

Note: You can quickly verify whether frames are aligned with the terrain slopes - PVcase will highlight any deviations from the main axis.

Option 2: Automatic Front View

1. Click Generate and select the frames or PV areas for which you want to generate Front views.
2. Click where you want to place the Front view sections.
3. The software will automatically generate the Front views, drawing the section line through the middle of the trackers

You can also take a closer look at the frames and how the slope values were derived.

1. Use the PLINE command.

2. Draw a line from the edge of the frame parallel to the horizon.

3. Navigate to the Home tab in AutoCAD.

4. In the Dimension tab, select Angular as the dimension type.

5. Click on the edge of the PV frame.

6. Click on the newly drawn horizontal line.

7. To finalize the dimensioning process, place the line at the desired location.

Slope analysis for fixed-tilt

Slope angles limit

For a Fixed-tilt design, you can define the limit for the slope angles in the east-west directions. In the example below, this limit is set to 10 %.

Then click Indicate, and the software will color the frames that fall outside the allowed limit. Frames exceeding the allowed slope will be colored.

Once you have the affected frames highlighted, click on Show details to see the exact slope angle or percentage for the frames in the area.

Front view

You can have a closer look at the slope angles and how they affect the frames by creating a front-view projection of the frames and terrain

 

To create a Front view, open the drop-down menu (next to Cross-section) and select Front view. You can now choose between Manual or Automatic Front view.

Option 1: Manual Front View

1. Click Draw section and draw your front-view line through the middle of the trackers.
2. Extend the line to the end of the frames.
3. Click to place your endpoint.
4. Click where you want to position the Front view section in your drawing.

Note: You can quickly verify whether frames are aligned with the terrain slopes—PVcase will highlight any deviations from the main axis.

Option 2: Automatic Front View

1. Click Generate and select the frames or PV areas for which you want to generate Front views.
2. Click where you want to place the Front view sections.
3. The software will automatically generate the Front views, drawing the section line through the middle of the trackers.
 

You can also take a closer look at the frames and how the slope values were derived.

1. Use the PLINE command
2. Draw a line from the edge of the frame parallel to the horizon
3. Navigate to the Home tab in AutoCAD
4. In the Dimension tab, select Angular as the dimension type
5. Click on the edge of the PV frame.
6. Click on the newly drawn horizontal line.
7. To finalize the dimensioning process, place the line at the desired location

This is essentially how PVcase measures the slope angle.

Setting slope

Examples