Right-click actions

Right-clicking elements in your design opens a contextual menu for quick and accurate modifications. These actions are organized into 3 sets based on the selected element and the available options in the menu.

PV area

We will start by exploring the options available to us in the right-click menu on the PV area polyline.

Clear PV area

The Clear PV area feature can be used to remove frames from a PV area without generating new frames.

To perform this action, right-click on the existing PV area polyline, navigate down to the PVcase sub-menu and left-click on the Clear PV area option. After some brief processing, the PV area will be devoid of frames.

Performing this action will also remove the alignment line that was used for the previous PV area. You would be prompted to draw a new one when re-generating the area.

If you want to retain the previous alignment line, you can simply use the Generate single area on top of the existing PV area, and it will retain the alignment line.

Draw alignment line

There is also the option to create a new alignment line for an existing PV area. To perform this action, right-click on an existing PV area polyline, navigate down to the PVcase sub-menu and left-click on the Draw alignment line option. You would be prompted to draw the alignment line; this may be done similarly to when generating a new PV area. Once the line is drawn, press the Space or Enter keys on the keyboard and PVcase will regenerate the PV area with the new alignment line.

Find alignment line

Navigating projects with multiple fields and complex alignment lines can be challenging when you try to determine which line corresponds to which field.

Right-click and choose Find alignment line. The relevant alignment for the chosen PV area will be selected.

PVcase frame

The right-click menu for PVcase-generated PV frames can be used for individual frames or multiple frames simultaneously.

Change module power

Change module power enables us to alter the power output value for the modules in one or more PVcase-generated PV frames.

To perform this action, right-click on our existing PVcase PV frame, navigate down to the PVcase sub-menu and left-click on the Change module power option.

You would then be presented with a pop-up menu that prompts you to specify the new power output for the modules in the selected frames. We can also see the current value for the module power for this frame. In the below example, we specified 500 watts as our module power instead of 600 watts. Once the value is entered, click OK and this will close the window.

We can see how this has affected the frames by going to the Layout information menu and clicking on Frame information. We are then prompted to select the frame we want to inspect. Once we select the frame, press Space or Enter on the keyboard and we will get a pop-up window detailing all the applicable parameters for the frame, including the module power and the total frame power.

Swap preset

The swap preset enables us to use an alternate frame preset to what the software has opted for when initially generating the PV area.

To perform this action, we right-click on our existing PVcase PV frame, navigate down to the PVcase sub-menu and left-click on the Swap preset option. We are then prompted to select the new preset we want to use - in the below example, we will replace our current 2C20 preset with the 2C10 preset, which is slightly shorter.

In this example, we want to have more unpopulated space to the right of the affected frame, therefore we will choose the alignment side to be Left. As we can see, the frame preset has changed and the new frame stays aligned to the right-hand side, leaving us with newly-unoccupied space to the right of it.

The steps for changing the preset from a smaller one to a larger one are the same, but one should be sure that there is sufficient space to place the larger preset in the allotted PV area.

Change piling

Change piling can be used to modify the piling for one or more frames. This will only apply to the selected frames and will not update the preset.

To perform this action, right-click on our existing PVcase PV frame, navigate down to the PVcase sub-menu and left-click on the Change piling option. You would then be presented with the Piling information window. You would be able to alter the number of poles in the horizontal and vertical orientations, the distances between the poles, and the spacing from the edges of the frame.

For our example, we will increase the horizontal pole count from 4 to 6. We have the option to alter the distances as we would when initially specifying the piling details. We now click on OK and our piling has now been updated.

To see how the changes have affected the frame, we create a Front view of the frames and inspect the results.

As we can see, the frame size remains the same, but the pilings are quite different from what was automatically generated.

Non-PVcase frames

Convert to PVcase

Convert to PVcase allows users to adapt frames that were created manually or with other software solutions into elements that are compatible with PVcase.

In the below example, we see several frames that we want to convert to PVcase-compatible frames. Their sizes are identical. We go into the Frame & Park settings and create the new preset with which we want to substitute the rectangles. In our case, the preset 2C20 is exactly sized for this example.

To perform this action, we right-click on our rectangle, navigate down to the PVcase sub-menu and left-click on the Covert to PVcase option. We are then prompted to select which of our presets works for this. We will use the 2C20 preset, which we will select from the dropdown menu. We must now select the corner on our rectangles which is equivalent to the highlighted corner on the preset. We simply click the target corner and it will use this as a reference for placing the presets. We also have the option to enter the Azimuth - in this case, it is not applicable.

When we click OK, we will see that the rectangles now have our PVcase frames superimposed on top.