Civil analysis — Slope analysis

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 have selected the area, you can specify the slope limits you want to test your area with. Since this is a single-axis tracker design, you may define the limit for the slope angles in the north and south orientations. In this example, it's set to 6% north and 12% south.

Next, click on Indicate, and the software will color the frames that are not within the allowed limit. Frames exceeding the allowed north slope will be marked with red, while frames exceeding the allowed south slope will be marked with yellow.

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.

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

Front view

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

Here's how to create a Front view:

1. Open the drop-down menu (next to Cross-section)
2. Select Front view
3. Draw your front-view line through the middle of the trackers
4. Continue the line until the end of the frames
5. Click at your end-point
6. Click where you want your Front view section to be placed.

At a glance, you can check that the frames were placed in accordance with the slopes of the terrain and the software highlights the deviations from the main axis.

You can also have a better 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.

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 on Indicate and the software will color the frames that are not within our 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 take a closer look at the slopes and how they affect the frames by creating a front-view projection of the frames and terrain. 

Here's how to create a Front view:

1. Open the drop-down menu (next to Cross-section)
2. Select Front view
3. Draw your front-view line in front of the frames
4. Continue the line until the end of these frames
5. Click at your end-point
6. Click where you want your Front view section to be placed

At a glance, you can check that the frames were placed in accordance with the slopes of the terrain and the software highlights the deviations from the main axis. We are able to have a better 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.

Set slope

This does not modify the terrain; it will just lift or lower the structure on one extreme side (the one that is farther away from the Alignment line that was used when the layout was generated). This might lead to more places where the terrain proximity constraints are not respected. For example, the frame might now be too low or too high on one side. This can be analyzed and corrected in the next tab, Collision & Grading.

Examples