Cancelling a layout
How to stop a generation in progress — and what happens to your calculation count when you do.
If you started a generation and need to stop it — wrong KMZ, wrong parameters, or you just changed your mind — click Cancel in the Inspector's pinned action area. It's the destructive-styled button that appears under the per-plot progress list while a layout is in flight.
What happens when you cancel
The cancel signal goes out
Clicking Cancel sends the cancel signal to the cloud immediately. The Inspector's per-plot list keeps updating for a few seconds while plots that were mid-calculation notice the cancel and stop.
Plots that haven't started are dropped
Any plot that was queued (hadn't been picked up by a worker yet) is marked cancelled. No compute time is spent on those.
Plots already running stop at their next checkpoint
A plot that was mid-compute when you cancelled checks for the cancel signal at the next safe point and exits. Anything it had already computed is discarded — no partial result is shown on the canvas. This usually happens within seconds; on very large plots it can take up to a minute.
Your calculation is refunded
When you cancel a layout that's in flight, the calculation that was debited at Generate layout time is refunded back to your plan. Your remaining-calculations count goes back up by 1.
Calculations are billed and refunded per layout, not per plot — a 6-plot layout costs 1 calculation whether all 6 finish, none finish, or you cancel partway through.
The Inspector returns to its idle state
The pinned action area swaps back to Generate layout again with a summary line showing Cancelled — N of M done before stop. The parameters you had set are preserved. Your KMZ and project state are unchanged. You can edit parameters and generate again immediately.
When NOT to cancel
If only one plot has a problem and the others are fine, you don't need to cancel the whole layout. Let it finish — the Inspector will mark the failing plot as failed and show 5 of 6 done — 1 failed. You can keep the partial result, or click Generate layout again to re-try the whole project.
The Cancel button also disables itself once every plot has finished computing and the project is in the Stitching results… phase. At that point there's nothing to cancel — the heavy compute is over, and the rollup step will finish in a few seconds.
If cancel doesn't seem to work
In rare cases — a network blip, an app freeze, a cloud-side stall — the cancel signal doesn't land cleanly and the Inspector sits on Generating layout… for longer than expected.
If you've waited a few minutes past when the layout should have been cancelled:
- Wait one more minute. Cloud workers check for the cancel signal at a few specific points; sometimes it just takes a moment.
- If it's still stuck, restart the SolarLayout app. Your project state on disk is unchanged — the project, KMZ and parameters are all preserved.
- Any in-flight worker either notices the cancel and exits, or finishes on its own and writes a result that the cancelled layout will discard. Either way you won't be charged for the cancelled layout.
If this happens more than once, it's a bug — please tell us and include the approximate time and your project name so we can find the logs.