Materials list templates

A template is a complete materials list for a reference plant, written out in full and shipped with the application. You load one into a window of its own, edit it, and — if you want to — put it in place of the list computed from your layout.

Templates exist because the two lists know different things. The computed list knows the plant: how many tables were placed, how many control rooms, how long the cable runs are. A template knows the procurement detail a real materials list needs and a layout cannot infer.

Why a template is worth starting from

The computed list carries what the layout can measure. It cannot carry the rest, because nothing in a boundary file or a set of layout parameters implies it:

• Connector types — what mates with what at each junction.
• Cable specifications — the detail behind a length: what the conductor is, how it is sized, how it is insulated and protected.
• Earthing — the earthing material a plant needs, none of which the layout places.
• Conduit — protection and routing material for the cable runs.

A template already has lines of that kind written, described and unitised. Starting from one and correcting its quantities is faster and less error-prone than typing a procurement-grade list into an empty table.

The four built-in templates

Pick one from the BOM Template selector. Each name states the plant it was written for: its DC and AC capacity, its inverter topology, and its mounting type.

Read the name and you know what is inside. FT is fixed tilt, SAT is a single-axis tracker, and the two capacities are the DC and AC ratings of the reference plant the list was written for.

Three things follow from the naming, and all three matter when you choose:

• The topology decides which line items exist at all. A String Inverter list carries string inverters and the AC side that follows them; a Central Inverter list carries string monitoring boxes and DC trunks instead, because the central inverter sits inside the control room and there is no distributed AC leg. The two lists are not versions of each other.
• The mounting type decides the structural lines. Fixed-tilt racking and a single-axis tracker are different structures with different material behind them, so the structural part of the list does not carry over between the two.
• The capacity only decides the quantities. Those you correct against your own plant anyway, so a capacity that does not match your design is the least important of the three mismatches.

Loading one

The template window is not modal. The main window stays live behind it, so you can move between the two, scroll each independently, and read a computed quantity straight across into the template. Arrange them side by side and the comparison is the whole point of the design: nothing you do in the template window touches the computed list until you explicitly ask for it.

Editing the template

The template window holds the same five columns as the computed list — S.No, Material Description, Quantity, Unit, Remark — and edits the same way. Click a cell and type.

What you normally change:

• Quantities, corrected against the computed list. This is the main work. The template's figures belong to its reference plant, not to yours.
• Descriptions and remarks, where your specification differs from the template's — a different cable size, a different structure grade, a make your organisation is standardised on.
• Line items, added or removed where your scope differs. A plant without street lighting does not need those lines; anything in your scope that the reference plant did not have is a line you add.

Everything the computed list can tell you is one window away while you do it: the table count, the control room count, the inverter or string monitoring box count, the arrester count, the pile count, and the cable and trench lengths.

Applying it to the plant

Overlap into Plant BOM is the consequential step on this page. Read this section before you click it.

After a confirmation, Overlap into Plant BOM replaces the computed list with the template's contents. The computed rows are gone — not merged, not kept alongside, not appended to.

The full chain of consequence, so none of it is a surprise:

Getting the computed list back

⚙ Rebuild from Layout discards whatever is in the list and computes a fresh one from the plant. That is how you undo an overlap.

It is a full recompute rather than an undo, so it takes your edits with it as well as the template's rows. If there is anything in the current list you want to keep, export it to a spreadsheet before you rebuild.

Using a template in practice

The order below is the one that wastes the least work, because it settles the structural choices before the arithmetic.

A last check worth making before you circulate the result: the template is a starting point, not a validated schedule of material for your plant. Nothing in the application checks a template's line items against your design, so a line the template carries and your plant does not need will sit there quietly until somebody reads it.

Where to go next