Release notes

New studies

• Earthing Design — Tools ▸ Earthing Design… or the ⚡ Earthing Design button sizes the plant's earthing for the current layout: earth pits, strip and cable sizes, the plant grid resistance against your target, a calculation report, a BoQ, and PDF, DXF and CSV exports.
• Robot count from DXF — sizes the cleaning-robot fleet from any plant drawing, with no layout needed.
• Simulation with AC Capacity takes an ICR block AC; regenerating writes the matching block size into ICR Block.

ICR blocks and electrical grouping

• Click an ICR block (with the ICR blocks layer on) to open its summary: capacity, tables, ACCBs, transformer, cable lengths, arresters and piles. Export ICR-Block PDF draws the plant and one sheet per block; Export ICR-Block DXF sheets carry the same summary tables.
• The ACCB & Transformer card on the Electrical tab sets how inverters are grouped into ACCBs and transformers, the standard transformer ratings, and the power transformer. The Summary gains ACCBs, Transformers (IDT) and Power transformer (MVA); the automatic single-line diagram follows the card, the layout and the inverter file.

Changes that alter results

• ICR count is decided per separate piece of land, and each piece is split into blocks of equal capacity; half tables count as half.
• Cables card defaults: Inter-module lead 0.00 m/module and String return run along table unticked.
• Every inverter and SMB gets a cable. Each goes to the nearest ICR along the plant that still has room within the building's rating; DC string runs keep to the usable area, and AC feeders and DC trunks are kept inside the plant wherever a route exists — any that are not show as design warnings. DC string cables are routed in full except on a very large plot, where the DC trench is marked as an estimate.
• The cable schedule sizes AC feeders as one 3C × 300 mm² aluminium run on the inverter's maximum AC current, steps a feeder up only when its current needs it, and adds a Flag column (a stepped-up feeder, or a drop over 2.5 %), the plant's LV drop budget and a collection schedule.
• Half tables and half trackers get their own pile pattern, derived from the full one or your own, and every output counts each unit's own piles.
• A CAD drawing is never placed at an assumed location. The Site reference window starts empty: use the drawing's own coordinates, place it by latitude and longitude, or choose layout only.

Working with results

• Results say when they are out of date. Change an input after a run and the layout, Summary, Energy view and block windows say so, and exports wait for Regenerate Layout.
• Design warnings — overloaded ICRs, long feeders, trenches outside the plant — show in the Summary, the PDF summary page and the BOM.
• A project keeps every input, and a reopened project's exports and drawing tools work without a new Generate.
• While cables are routed, the obstruction, MCR and object tools wait, and a change you make meanwhile is applied when the run finishes.

A rebuilt interface

The window has been reorganised around the way a design is worked through. Nothing about placement, routing or the energy model changed in this release; what changed is where things are and what they are called. Older screenshots and the in-app guide describe the previous arrangement.

• The New design window replaces the four start-up cards. Two segmented controls — MOUNTING and INVERTER — with a live summary card and one Continue button. The ribbon's design chip and File ▸ Move to String / Central Window… open a second window for a different design.
• The ribbon across the top carries the brand, the design chip, the access chip, and Docs and Support buttons.
• Five stage tabs — Site · Array · Electrical · Yield · Tools — replace the single long input panel, with Generate Layout (F5) pinned above them and a hint line saying why it is disabled. Every card is collapsible. The Tools tab, which holds obstructions, the main control room and the three studies, is locked until a layout exists.
• Five views of the plant on the right — Layout · Summary · Energy · BOM · SLD (Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+5) — with the current view's tools beside the tabs. The Summary view shows the per-plant figures as a sheet turned on its side, grouped under SITE, ARRAY, ELECTRICAL, CABLES and ENERGY, with Copy and Open in window; the Energy view shows the yield result with tiles, the monthly table and charts.
• The Layers popover gathers the drawing's ON/OFF rows — plant layout, legend, arresters, ICR blocks, the three cable layers, contours and plant totals. The legend is folded behind a Legend ▾ chip on the plot.
• Plant chips under every view carry the totals — DC capacity, site area, tables, modules, ICR blocks, arresters and year-one P50 energy — and open the Summary or Energy view when clicked.
• Three navigation tools — Home, Pan and Zoom — and the mouse wheel zooms at the cursor. The view you set persists across redraws until Home, a new layout or a new boundary file.
• The Cables card on the Electrical tab holds Calculate cables and three DC allowances: inter-module lead, the string return run and DC cable slack.
• String sizing opens from a Size… button beside Modules per row or Modules per string (N–S) — the Auto / Manual prompt after loading a module file is gone.
• The Export menu beside Save project: Export KMZ, Export DXF, Export ICR-Block DXF (one sheet per control-room block), Export Cable Schedule (Excel), Export Detailed Project Report, and Export Image (PNG) for the plot. Export PDF (with Piles) appears while the pile overlay is on.
• The report is now a Word document — cover page, methodology, design basis, results, energy yield and the drawing annexures — in place of the PDF layout-and-summary export.
• Rebuilt dialogs. Site reference for CAD and image boundaries, Check boundaries, String sizing, Simulation with AC Capacity, Robotic module cleaning, Shadow View and the Pile layout editor follow one pattern: inputs on one side, the answer on the other as it updates, and one primary button that names its effect.

The first documented release

This is the first release covered by this documentation. Rather than a list of changes — there is no earlier documented version to compare against — it records what the application does as it ships.

Design

• Four design modes, chosen at every launch: fixed tilt or single-axis tracker, each with string inverters or central inverters and string monitoring boxes.
• Three boundary inputs — a Google Earth file, a CAD drawing, or a traced image. The Google Earth file is the only one that carries water bodies, obstructions and line corridors along with the boundary.
• Automatic tilt and row pitch from the site latitude, with the no-shading pitch at winter solstice, and an override for each.
• Placement options for maximising table count against boundary edges, and for filling leftover ground with half units.
• Terrain-aware placement that keeps tables off ground too steep or too uneven to build on, from satellite elevation data or your own contour file.
• Keep-clear shadows around control rooms, placed objects and perimeter street lights.

Equipment and cables

• Inverter control rooms sized to a capacity block you set, placed by table grouping and movable by hand.
• Lightning arresters on an overlapping coverage grid.
• A main control room and, on multi-plot sites, a unit substation per plot.
• Routed DC, AC and medium-voltage cables with conductor and trench lengths reported separately.

Analysis

• Energy yield from an automatic weather service or your own hourly file, with a loss-by-loss performance ratio, a computed thermal model, computed row-to-row shading, bifacial gain, degradation over the plant lifetime, and exceedance probabilities you choose.
• Sizing from a target AC capacity and DC/AC ratio.
• Cleaning robot fleet sizing, with per-gap bridging decisions.

Drawing and output

• Sketch Mode for hand editing, with drawing, measuring and dimensioning tools, layers, groups and a typed command line.
• A pile pattern editor and construction pile report.
• A single-line diagram builder with a full switchgear symbol set, automatic build from the plant, and import of an existing diagram.
• An editable bill of materials, computed from the layout, with four built-in templates.
• Exports to a multi-page A3 PDF report, Google Earth, a layered CAD drawing, a spreadsheet, and an irradiance and energy time series.