Maximizing placement and half tables

A regular grid on an irregular site leaves ground unused. A table is placed only where it fits entirely inside the usable area, so every diagonal fence, every curve and every row end rejects the last position and leaves a wedge of ground with nothing on it. Two options recover that ground, and both are off by default.

They recover it in different ways. Maximize placement moves each row sideways until it touches the boundary. Add half tables in leftover space drops a smaller unit into the gap that is left. You can use either, or both, and in both cases what you buy is capacity and what you pay is regularity.

Both live at the bottom of the table group — or the tracker group in a Single Axis Tracker session — alongside the geometry they modify. See Table configuration and Tracker configuration.

Maximize placement

With the option off, the whole grid shares one origin. Every row starts from the same east–west position, so the tables form clean vertical columns from the top of the plant to the bottom — and every row is limited by the same starting offset, whether or not that offset suits the boundary at that latitude.

With the option on, each row is positioned independently, pushed up against the exact boundary edge it meets. A row crossing a narrow part of the site starts further in; a row crossing a wide part starts further out. Where the fence runs diagonally, or curves, the row ends follow it instead of stopping short at a shared column line, and extra tables fit into the wedges the shared origin had wasted.

The gain is largest where the boundary is least like a rectangle: an irregular parcel, a curved river frontage, a site with a long diagonal edge. On a rectangular site aligned east–west there is nothing for the option to recover, because the shared origin already reaches both edges.

What it costs

Table columns will not be vertically aligned across rows. That is not a cosmetic detail, and it is the reason the option ships off:

• The drawing reads as untidy. On the layout sheet of the report, and in the CAD drawing, the north–south lines that a reviewer's eye follows are broken. Rows step in and out relative to each other.
• Cable runs get longer and less repeatable. DC and AC routing uses horizontal and vertical segments only. When the rows do not share a column line, the runs between a table and its inverter cannot be repeated block for block, and the routed lengths grow. See Cable routing.
• Cleaning lines lose their alignment. A cleaning robot drives along the module frames of one line and crosses from table to table over a bridge of a standard span. Rows that step sideways create gaps that are not the standard span, and each one either needs a supported bridge or breaks the line. See Robotic module cleaning.
• Generation takes longer on a large site. Every row is fitted against the boundary separately instead of being derived from a single grid.

When to use it

Turn it on when capacity is the binding constraint and the boundary is genuinely irregular — a site where the target capacity does not fit, and where a few per cent more tables decides whether the project works. Leave it off when you are producing a drawing for a bid, or when the plant will be built and maintained on a repeating block pattern.

The honest way to decide is to run the site both ways. Generate once with the option off, note the table count and capacity in the summary, turn it on, generate again, and compare. Nothing else in the design changes, so the difference is entirely the option.

Half tables

A half table is half the east–west width of a full MMS-Table — the module mounting structure carrying the modules — and carries half the strings. It is dropped wherever a full table will not fit: the end of a row, and the narrow strips along an angled boundary.

Everything else about it is the same as a full table. It sits on the same row pitch, at the same tilt, inside the same usable area, and it is placed only where it fits entirely inside it. A half table is not a partly-clipped full table — it is a shorter structure, which is why it can stand in ground a full one cannot.

On a tracker plant

The tracker equivalent is a half tracker, and it is halved along the other axis. A tracker unit is long north to south, because the strings run along the torque tube, so halving the strings halves the north–south length. The option reads Add half trackers in leftover space and is off by default, like its fixed-tilt counterpart.

The place a half tracker earns its keep is the north and south ends of a column, where a full-length unit runs out of ground before the boundary does.

How half units are counted

Half units are never mixed into the full-unit count. The summary table reports them in their own column, and wherever a count feeds another calculation the half unit is weighted at half:

When to use it

Turn half tables on when the boundary has many short row ends — a long perimeter relative to the area, several angled edges, or a site broken up by obstructions and corridors. The more edge the plant has, the more infill positions there are.

Leave them off when the plant is built from a repeating block that the procurement and construction schedule depends on. A second structure type means a second bill-of-materials line, a second set of piles, and a second erection method on site, for a capacity contribution that is by definition small.

You can also place a half unit by hand. Sketch Mode's ➕ Half Table tool drops one anywhere you click, which is the better route when you want two or three of them in specific places rather than every one the application can find. See Editing by hand.

Reading the result

The summary table reports full and half units in separate columns — labelled for tables in a fixed-tilt session and for trackers in a tracker session — so you can see at a glance how much of the plant came from infill. A plant with a large half count on a small full count is a plant whose capacity is leaning on the awkward edges of the site, which is worth knowing before you commit to it.

Read them together with the plant area and the module count. The three figures tell you what the plant is: how much ground, how many structures of each kind, and how much capacity came out. Every column is listed in Summary table columns.

What neither option changes

Both options only decide where a unit may stand. Everything else about the plant is untouched, which is what makes a before-and-after comparison meaningful:

• The row pitch and the tilt angle are unchanged. Rows stay on the same spacing, so the ground coverage ratio of the plant is not quietly altered and the shading loss behind it is still the shading loss you signed off.
• Rows still run east to west and panels still face the equator. Neither option rotates anything.
• The usable area is unchanged. The perimeter road, the obstructions, the corridors and the excluded terrain are all subtracted before either option is consulted, and a unit is still placed only where it fits entirely inside what is left. Neither option lets a table encroach on ground the site rules kept clear.
• The equipment stages are unchanged. More tables mean more capacity, which can mean an extra control room and more arresters — and those clear tables in turn. The extra capacity you read in the summary is the figure after all of that, not before it.

Using both together

The two options do not conflict, and used together they compound: the rows move out to the boundary first, then half units fill what the moved rows still leave behind. Expect the least regular plant the application can produce, and the highest table count.

If you are going to run a site both ways in any case, run it three times — off, maximize only, and both — and compare the capacity against how the drawing looks. The decision is not which number is largest; it is which plant you are prepared to build.

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