Your first layout

Open SolarLayout and start a new project

Open SolarLayout. On the Projects page, click New project (the button with a plus icon) in the top-right of the projects table. This opens the full-page create flow — a guided 1-2-3 form: add your site file, name the project, create it. (No KMZ handy? Create demo project starts you on a SolarLayout-managed reference site instead.)

In step 1, drop your KML or KMZ onto the upload area or tap to choose one. The moment it's readable, SolarLayout draws a preview of the boundary right there — before anything is uploaded. Step 2 then offers a project name prefilled from the filename; rename it to something your team will recognise later (most people use the customer or site name).

Create the project

When the file and name look right, click Create project in step 3. That's the deliberate point where SolarLayout starts the server work, ticking through three stages in place: Uploading your file → Creating your project → Reading your boundary. This usually takes 1–7 seconds the first time you create a project in a session (cold start); subsequent projects are faster.

If the boundary needs a fixable adjustment you'll see a clear, plain message — and where SolarLayout can repair it for you, a Fix this for me option. See common KMZ issues.

Open the Inspector and review parameters

Once the project loads, the right-side Inspector panel shows the plant parameters. For your first layout, the defaults work — you can refine later and re-generate.

Sensible starting points already in place:

• Module — a 580 W monofacial reference module (length 2.38 m, width 1.13 m). Replace it with a PAN file from your supplier when you have one — see PAN files.
• Design mode — string inverter.
• Tilt — auto (engine derives a sensible angle for your site latitude). Toggle Override tilt if you have a specific angle in mind.
• Row pitch — auto. Toggle Override row pitch to set a specific row spacing (in metres) if your design brief calls for it.

Click Generate

The Generate layout button sits in the sticky band at the top of the Inspector — visible no matter which Inspector tab you have open. Click it.

A status bar slides down across the top of the canvas with the run's overall progress — a spinner, Run in progress…, an elapsed time ("Started 12s ago"), and Cancel and View details buttons. It's an at-a-glance progress signal, not a live per-plot list. For the stage-by-stage breakdown — each step's queued / running / done / failed state — click View details to open the run's detail page. Single-plot layouts under ~100 acres usually finish in well under a minute; very large or multi-plot projects can take several minutes.

Read your layout

When generation finishes:

• The canvas shows module tables (the long thin rectangles), ICRs (Inverter Control Rooms — the small numbered squares), and, if you turned on cable calculation, the AC cable trenches.
• The results panel along the bottom of the canvas fills in. Its Energy yield tab shows annual energy, the P50 / P75 / P90 exceedance values, the monthly breakdown, and the 25-year degradation curve. (The Inspector's Energy modeling tab is where you set the energy assumptions — that's inputs, not results.)
• The results panel's Download tab unlocks the exports — KMZ, PDF, and DXF (plus a 15-minute energy CSV when the run used a custom hourly weather file).

Export your bid pack

The exports live in the Download tab of the canvas-bottom results panel. With your completed run selected, each format is a row — KMZ, PDF, and DXF — with its own Download button. The PDF is a report with the layout, capacity summary, energy yield, and a bill of materials. (A 15-minute energy CSV row also appears when the run used a custom hourly weather file.)

That's your first deliverable. See PDF report walkthrough for what's in each section.