Learn how to configure and generate fixed-tilt PV layouts in PVcase GM. This step-by-step tutorial covers initial settings setup, custom frame preset creation, placement and shading controls, multi-area generation, and pile grouping analysis.
Fixed-tilt - PV layout creation
Before starting frame creation, you must set up the Layout generation settings. Click the Layout generation settings button and adjust the information there.
In the Layout generation settings menu, the following selections are available:
Select Distance units (milimeters/meters or inches/feet).
Define Distance precision (two, three or four decimals).
Select Slope units (degrees, percentages).
See the AutoCAD units for distance (and if necessary, correct to match the PVcase GM distance units).
Select the Restriction zone layer(s) (inside of boundaries will be avoided during frame generation).
The Optimized frames option hides the modules (shows only frame boundary) to increase the performance of AutoCAD.
The Topographic layout option allows generating on a terrain survey, or on a flat surface when you don't have terrain data.
Using the Select button you can select the terrain layers to be used.
Change from Existing (original) topography to Proposed topography (after performing the grading).
The next necessary step before area generation is to set up the Frame & park settings. Click the Frame & park settings button and adjust the information in the tabs.
This includes your frames' physical parameters, placement setup, park layout settings, and reference height setup.
Frame creation
Using the Current preset field and adjacent icons, you can:
Create new presets:
Customize names for frame presets;
Duplicate the current frame preset;
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Import and export preset configuration:
For more information about importing and exporting settings: Import and export settings
Create a preset based on a selected frame from the model space;
Delete an existing preset;
The Module Parameters section allows you to define custom module dimensions and power to match those that are provided by your module manufacturer of choice.
The Frame parameters section allows us to specify:
The framing type (fixed-tilt, single-axis tracker, or east-west).
The module orientation - either portrait or landscape.
The grid size of the frame - we can specify the number of rows and columns in our frame.
The Tilt angle.
You may also choose to modify the horizontal and vertical gaps between modules.
The Frame power is determined by the power of the individual modules, multiplied by the number of modules per frame.
Open the Custom Piling menu to adjust the piling information for the currently selected frame.
You may specify whether the piling distribution should be custom or even.
With Even distribution, the inter-pole gaps are equal. You can also choose whether to edit the margins independently or keep them equal. Under the margin field, you can see the calculated middle distribution value. All of this is displayed and updated on the illustration on the right-hand side of the window.
In our case, you can use the custom pole distribution and set the horizontal pole amount to 6. As you can see, we can adjust the spacing between the poles. The selected spacing is displayed and updated on the illustration on the right-hand side of the window.
If the edges of the frames don't coincide with the edge of the first/last module, you can add an overhang:
Next, configure the vertical poles. Set the number of poles to 2, then adjust the gap between the pile and the module and the spacing between the poles as needed. You can see all changes in the figure on the right side of the window.
Once you finish piling, click OK to close the menu window.
If you would like to use the same preset in another project, just use the export/import presets button:
For more information about importing and exporting settings, proceed to the article below:
Placement Setup
Now that you've explored the Frame Creation capabilities of PVcase, let's look at the placement setup options. Firstly, open the Placement Setup menu tab and select Fixed-Tilt Frames.
Here you can see the Preset Library field, which contains all the presets we just created for this specific DWG file. From here, you can choose which available presets to use when creating new PV areas. You can select one or multiple presets, provided they have matching row counts, vertical gap sizes, and tilt angles.
There is also an option to choose a specific color for each preset. To do so, click a color box, select the specific color, and press OK to finalize.
Just below the Preset Library field, you can see the option to select the frame placement order:
Descending from the alignment side denotes that when populating the PV area, the software will put larger frames closest to the alignment line and will keep the smaller frames on the opposite side.
Ascending from the alignment side would place the smallest frames closest to the alignment line, placing the largest frames furthest away from the alignment line.
Park settings
Now that you've created and selected frame presets, you can move on to the Park settings options.
You can see that the three main sections are Project settings and Design settings:
You are presented with two options to establish our Shade limit: either by defining a specific Sun position angle or by using the time at the site location.
Assuming you use the time-based shade limit option, you would click on the globe icon, which allows us to either move around the embedded map, placing a pinpoint for the location, or by searching for the general location with the text field search. We will use Vilnius for this example and click OK once we are done.
This enables us to set the time and date for which we would like to perform our calculations. As would be typically used in the northern hemisphere, we will set our date as December 21 in our example and then we can adjust the time at which we would like to get the results. This can be by selecting dawn, mid-day, or twilight , or by typing in a specific time. The software will adjust the Sun’s altitude accordingly.
When the solar panels are placed, they are generally arranged with a particular pitch such that it mitigates shading on a specific date and time (usually the Winter solstice).
If preferred, you can choose Angle and use the Shading limit angle for frame separation. You can manually edit the sun position field rather than use the values given from the date/time calculations.
You can also indicate whether you want to allow a certain percentage of shading. In the example below, 33.33% shading was allowed. Therefore, at the set time/angle, the shadow of the preceding table doesn't reach the second module out of the three:
Learn more about Shading analysis in Shading objects & shading analysis.
In the Design settings section, we can define the limits for spacing between rows of frames in various conditions.
The minimum inner spacing & pitch will limit spacing when the next row of frames is going uphill (positive altitude delta, South slope in the Northern hemisphere).
The flat inner spacing & pitch define spacing when the next row of frames is at the same elevation (no altitude delta);
The maximum inner spacing & pitch will limit spacing when the next row of frames is going downhill (negative altitude delta, North slope on Southern hemisphere).
Should there be a scenario where you want to have a fixed distance between the frame rows, this can be enabled by checking the Fixed distance field. Please note that this is only available when you use the Angle option.
You also have the option to toggle the Aligned frames parameter. It can be used to generate frames in a more orderly fashion, especially in less space-constrained areas. As a consequence, it is less efficient with the park's power capacity, and disabling this option would allow us to better utilize the available land.
Another possibility is to have Corridors for fixed-tilt systems.
In the Corridor menu, you can define spaces for access or maintenance roads, therefore, dividing our fixed-tilt layout into separate clusters. This allows for the creation of patterns for roads and also for placement of Transformers.
To enable the use of corridors in fixed-tilt design, click on Corridors and we are presented with the corridor settings window. Here we have the option to enable corridors in our design by toggling the checkbox. This allows us to adjust the corridor grid size, the gap sizes (both primary and secondary)and to toggle on and off auxiliary corridor lines. The corridor lines can be later converted to roads using PVcase GM.
Once we are satisfied with the corridor design, we click on Confirm to finalize our settings.
If your application requires it, you can modify the azimuth of your frames by up to 89.9°. To set the azimuth, either you enter a value or you draw it by clicking on the Draw button:
You may also toggle the frame orientation by choosing North or South in the drop-down menu. This is dependent on the location of your solar park. In the Northern hemisphere, we would use south-facing frames, while in the Southern hemisphere, we would use north-facing frames instead.
Height & Optimization
The Height settings section allows us to define the frame height for the PV area we intend to generate. Please note that the input field is for the reference height rather than the minimum clearance height. PVcase places both front corners of the frame based on the reference height, without taking terrain collision in other places of the frame into account. However, terrain collision can be analyzed at a later stage, as part of our Civil analysis section.
The illustrations below show how the reference height is applied in Standard mode and how it affects the frame's highest point and the pole lengths.
In Optimized mode, you can set a reference range instead of a fixed reference height. The software places the frames at the lowest height first. If it detects a collision anywhere in the frame, it raises the height and tests again until there are no collisions. If a collision cannot be avoided, it places the frames at the maximum height. This optimizes for minimum cut, but increases the fill.
Area generation
The first step in generating areas is to define the PV area you will work in. In PVcase, define a PV area with a closed polyline. You can do this using the default AutoCAD polyline function. To create this, type PLINE and press Enter, then draw the desired perimeter of the PV area, ending the polyline at its starting point.
Once you've configured the Frame & Park Settings to your specifications and have a suitable PV area perimeter polyline, you can generate the PV areas in one of two ways: one at a time or multiple areas simultaneously.
First, let us showcase creating a single PV area. While the single-area option is the default, you can choose to generate a single area or multiple areas by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting Generate single area.
Having chosen this option, we are prompted to select our PV area boundary - select our newly-drawn polyline and press Enter on the keyboard. You will then be prompted to define an Alignment line.
An alignment line is used to indicate the alignment bias of PV frames when creating PV areas. We can draw alignment lines on the PV area perimeter polyline as well as inside of it and outside of it. In our example, we will draw the Alignment line in the middle of our PV area - once we have our line, we press Enter or Space on our keyboards - this will initiate the generation of our frames in the PV area. Depending on the size of the area, this should only take a few seconds - we can now see our newly-generated frames in the PV area we defined.
For our next example, let us clear the PV area by right-clicking on the PV area perimeter line, going to the PVcase sub-menu and clicking on the Clear PV area option.
Then we create an extra PV area. Let us use the same PLINE command to draw another PV area.
We now have two viable PV area perimeters, which enables us to illustrate how one can generate multiple PV areas simultaneously. By clicking on the dropdown menu, we select the Generate multiple areas option, which prompts us to select our PV areas. Once both areas are selected, press Enter on the keyboard and draw the alignment line for both areas - when generating multiple areas simultaneously, you are restricted to having a singular alignment line for both. Once you have the alignment line, press Enter or Space and we will have both PV areas populated shortly.
A third way of generating the layout would be using the Capacity iteration which allows to calculate different scenarios based on varying row spacing and tilt angle.
Learn more in Capacity iteration.
Show piling
Once the PV areas are generated, generate the piling. Click the Show piling button, select the PV area perimeter line, and press Space or Enter. Soon, your frames will be populated with piles.
To see what the piling looks like, choose an isometric view (such as SW Isometric) and/or hold Shift and the middle mouse button to manually rotate the view.
Pile Grouping by length
This function lets us see how many piles belong to each length group and how they're spatially distributed, helping us spot problematic areas that may need changes to pile lengths or grading.
Run Show piling as described above
Open the Pile grouping window from the same drop-down menu:
Define the start and end values of the length groups and the increments between each and customize group colors:
Select PVarea(s) and run Group piles - this will color each pile according to its length group and populate the pile count in the table:
Export to CAD model space
- Export to the BOM Excel sheet.
Moving frames manually (shadow frames)
After generation, you can move tables freely and copy them. However, if the layout is terrain-based, they will turn red (and move to the PVcase Shadow Frames layer) because they need to be adapted to the terrain or reassigned to an area. Until they are resolved, they will not be counted inside the Layout information.
Learn more about how to work with shadow frames in Shadow frames.