What's new

SolarLayout Rooftop updates in the browser: the next time you open it, you have the latest. Each update that changes what you meet has an entry here, newest first.

13 October 2026

SolarLayout Rooftop is rebuilt around the order of the work: its screens, their words and the way through them.

• Five steps. A design goes Roof, Array, Strings, Performance, Handover. The steps stand in the top bar (on a phone, the tab bar at the foot), each with its mark: a tick when done, a note when it needs you. One primary leads on from each step: Build this roof on Find, then Continue to Array, Continue to Strings and so on, and Download all on Handover. See The five steps.
• Find is the Roof step's first part. The search is the first thing in the column, with Use my location and Enter the roof by hand under it. Outline with Corners, Rectangle or Detect building, add the obstacles with their Height above the roof, choose the roof type, then Build this roof. See Find the roof.
• Sun is a view, on the Roof, Array and Strings steps. Sun at the stage's top right shows the sun's arc with its shade-free hours, the shadows at the time on the timeline, the shade map and the shade over the year. See The Sun view.
• The result in one place. The energy of year 1 stands at the top bar's right (on a tablet, in a row under the stage); pressed, it gives seven figures and Open Performance. Notes to review count beside it.
• One name for each thing. The roof types are "Flat, rows facing south", "Flat, rows facing east and west" and "Sloped" (Tilted rows, East-west and Sloped on the Roof step's buttons); the string length is Modules per string. Most fields say who set their value: Default, From the weather, Set for a country, or Yours.
• Hide panel. On a computer, the work column hides so the roof takes the whole width: the button at its top right, or ⌘ \ (Ctrl \).
• Strings: the options first. Most options carry a word on why they are there, such as Recommended; Why shows the lengths that fit and the hours that set them; Add your own option sits under the options. See Strings.
• Performance on one screen. The energy of year 1 with Likely (P50) and Conservative (P90), the option and the weather beside it, three figures, and four tabs: By month, Over 25 years, Where the energy goes and Assumptions. See Performance.
• Handover by who the files are for. The files are grouped for the client, the utility, the installer and you, with a preview of the one open; Download all takes them in one zip, the project file among them. See Handover.
• Home is a start screen. The search for the roof first, the other ways in under it, your designs on this device, then the demo.
• A design keeps its place's name, from the place found on Find, and Present shows it.
• Present's controls. A move or a touch shows the scene before, pause or play, the scene after and the six scenes; Space, ← → and Esc work from the keyboard. Present starts from Performance and Handover on a tablet or a computer.
• The help in the app's words. The ? beside a section or a tool opens its topic, in the screen's own words, with a link to these pages.

New designs start on Waaree's module

• The default module is the Waaree Elite BiN-08-580 (580 Wp, bifacial), for a new design and for the demo, in place of the INA-144MHC-TF-560. Its file states its own temperature figures, so the demo opens with nothing to review.
• The demo's results change. Its recommended option is 25 modules per string × 24 strings on one inverter: 348.00 kWp, a DC/AC ratio of 1.27 and 586.4 MWh in year 1 (29 × 22, 357.28 kWp and 617.8 MWh before).
• An inverter file without a nominal MPP voltage takes the middle of the three voltages its efficiency was measured at as its nominal, which sets one of the string lengths the options try.

10 October 2026

• Each string's DC cable is sized. The DC cable schedule gives each string the smallest of 4, 6 and 10 mm² copper that carries 1.25 times the module's Isc and drops no more than 1 % of its voltage, with a Drop (%) column. The bill of materials gives the metres of each size.
• Far shading takes the sky the horizon hides. The diffuse light the distant horizon hides now counts as far shading, not near shading, in the Sun lens and in Performance. The year's energy is the same.
• The inverter in the CAD layout at its size. The DXF draws each inverter at the width and depth its OND file gives; where the file gives none, a 2 × 1.2 m block named a symbol, not to scale.
• Add the obstacle. In the Roof lens a new obstacle joins the design by Add the … or Enter, once its height is typed; leaving the height field does not add it.
• One button for a detected footprint. On Find, the callout of a detected building has Use this outline; its corners drag as any outline's.

9 October 2026

• Where your designs are kept, in plain words. Home's On this device says: "Your designs are kept on this device."
• Sloped from Find. A roof built on Find as Sloped, flush gets the roof Sloped gives in the Roof lens: no parapet, and a pitch of 10° where it had none.
• PVGIS weather without its horizon says so. When PVGIS sends a site's weather without its horizon, the Sun lens reads "Far shading: not counted, PVGIS sent no horizon for this site", and Performance notes the same. The next time the weather loads, PVGIS is asked again.
• The east-west ridge line. On an east-west roof, the Array lens says "The ridges run square to the roof edge closest to the equator".
• Your own option on a small roof. When a roof holds too few positions for the run's options but one string fits, Add your own stands under the message in the Strings lens, set to that string. Add builds it and chooses it.
• A weather CSV is a whole year. A file of other than 8,760 hours (8,784 in a leap year) is refused: the energy of a year needs each hour of it. A blank or unreadable global irradiance cell is refused with its row, and so is one of beam or diffuse when the file gives both. Irradiance below zero, taken as 0, and gaps in the air temperature, filled from the hours on either side, are noted.
• Sloped roofs face their slope. Modules on a sloped, flush roof face its Faces, whatever azimuth the array kept from a flat roof.
• A row pitch under a table's depth says so. One entered under a table's depth on plan plus 0.3 m is raised to it, with a note to review.
• The Voc coefficient that sizes the strings. Under Sizing temperatures, the field gives the one-diode model's coefficient the strings are sized with, unless you enter one.
• A module file without a voltage rating. It is taken as 1000 V, and the Strings lens says the limit was taken, not given by the module.

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