How layout generation works
What happens between clicking Generate and seeing your finished layout.
When you click Generate layout, SolarLayout designs your plant on cloud workers and renders the result on the canvas. Most layouts finish in 2–10 minutes.
What you'll see
Click Generate layout
The button lives at the top of the Inspector panel (left side of the project window), inside the Plant Layout tab. Once you click it, the Inspector switches to in-progress mode and the canvas shows a Computing — N of M done chip in the centre.
Plots are designed in parallel
If your KMZ has multiple plot boundaries, each plot is designed at the same time on a separate cloud worker. The Inspector shows a per-plot progress list under the Generating layout — N of M boundaries done header — one row per plot with a live status (queued, running with elapsed seconds, done, failed).
For most projects this finishes in 2–10 minutes total. A single plot under 100 acres usually finishes in under a minute.
Your layout appears on the canvas
When all plots finish, the full layout renders:
- Module tables — long thin rectangles, one row per table.
- Inverter Control Rooms (ICRs) — numbered squares, sized at approximately 18 MWp each.
- String inverters (string-inverter mode) — small rectangles placed near the tables they serve.
- DC and AC cables — lines connecting tables to inverters to ICRs. Only drawn if you enabled Calculate AC cable trench before generating, and your plan includes cable routing.
- Lightning arresters — placed at code-required intervals.
Energy yield (annual P50 / P75 / P90 and 25-year degradation curve) appears in the Energy yield tab at the bottom of the canvas. Exports become available in the top toolbar of the canvas.
How long it takes
A rough guide for a single plot:
| Plot size | Typical time |
|---|---|
| Small (< 50 acres) | 30–90 seconds |
| Medium (50–500 acres) | 1–4 minutes |
| Large (500+ acres) | 4–10 minutes |
Plots are designed in parallel, so a 4-plot project usually takes about as long as its biggest individual plot — not 4× longer.
After every plot finishes, there's a short Stitching results… phase (a few seconds) while the per-plot outputs are merged into the project layout, then a Loading layout… phase while the desktop downloads the result and renders it.
If a plot fails
If one plot can't be designed, the Inspector marks that plot's row as failed and the rest of the project still completes. The header shows e.g. 5 of 6 done — 1 failed; the canvas renders everything that succeeded.
To re-try a failed plot, click Generate layout again in the Inspector — this re-runs the whole project. (Per-plot re-run isn't in v0.1 yet.)
See Cancelling a layout for how to stop a generation in progress.
What gets placed by default
SolarLayout places:
- Module tables sized per your module spec and table configuration. Row pitch is auto-derived from your latitude and tilt so the front edge of one row doesn't shade the back edge of the next at winter solstice, unless you override Row spacing or GCR in the Inspector.
- Inverter Control Rooms (ICRs) sized at approximately 18 MWp per ICR.
- String inverters or central inverters depending on the Design mode you picked in the Inspector.
- Lightning arresters at code-required intervals.
- DC and AC cables — only when Calculate AC cable trench is enabled (Pro plans only) before you click Generate. Otherwise no cables are drawn and the PDF report omits the cable BoM.
You can adjust tilt, row spacing / GCR, table gaps, inverter sizing and a few other parameters in the Inspector → Plant Layout tab before generating. See Cable routing for the cable-routing toggle.