Multi-plot sites
One boundary file can hold several separate plant boundaries. Each becomes its own plant, with its own row in the summary and its own unit substation.
A boundary file may contain more than one plant boundary. Each one becomes a separate plant: it is laid out on its own, gets its own tables, control rooms, lightning arresters and cables, and gets its own row in the summary table. This is how a site split by a road, a canal or a change of ownership is designed in one run rather than as several projects.
Nothing about the inputs changes. The module, table, spacing, site and equipment settings apply to every plant in the file, so the plants share a design and differ only in the ground they stand on.
- What it shows
- The plot area for a file containing three or more separate boundaries, all laid out, with the summary table below showing one row per plant plus the total row.
- How to get there
- Load a multi-boundary file and generate. Fit the view so every plot is visible.
- Callouts to add
- Label two plots with their names as they appear in the summary rows.
What counts as a plant
The application decides from containment, not from names or from the order features appear in the file:
- A polygon that is not contained within another polygon is a plant boundary.
- A polygon fully contained within a boundary is an obstacle in that plant — a water body, a building, a substation.
So a file with three separate outer polygons produces three plants, and a file with one outer polygon containing three inner ones produces one plant with three obstacles. The difference is entirely whether the polygons are nested.
Each plant is laid out on its own
Every plant runs the whole pipeline for itself. Its boundary is shrunk inward by the perimeter road width to give its own usable area, its own obstructions and corridors are subtracted, its own table grid is placed, and its own control rooms and arresters follow from its own capacity. See How placement works.
Two consequences are worth knowing before you read the numbers:
- The capacity block applies per plant. The number of control rooms is worked out from each plant's own capacity, rounded up — so three plants of modest capacity can carry three rooms between them where one combined plant of the same total capacity would have carried fewer. See Inverter control rooms.
- Every plant gets its own perimeter road. The road band is taken off the inside of each boundary, so splitting one parcel into two plants costs you two road bands instead of one.
What is shared and what is per plant
| Shared across every plant | Worked out separately for each plant |
|---|---|
| The module, table or tracker, spacing and tilt settings | The usable area, and everything subtracted from it |
| The perimeter road width, corridor setback and capacity block values | The road band, the corridors and the number of control rooms those values produce |
| The equipment footprints, shadow window and arrester radius | The placed rooms, arresters, inverters and cable routes |
| The energy assumptions — weather source, losses, degradation, probabilities | The yield figures, because they follow that plant's own capacity |
| The main control room, placed once for the site | The unit substation each other plot receives |
The practical reading of that table: you cannot give one plant a different row pitch, a different table configuration or a different road width. If two parcels genuinely need different designs, design them in separate sessions from separate files.
Preparing the file
The rules for a single boundary all still apply, and two more matter only when there are several.
| Requirement | Why |
|---|---|
| Each boundary is a closed polygon — first and last ring coordinate identical | An open ring cannot be shrunk inward or tested for containment |
| Boundaries must not overlap each other | Overlapping outlines make the containment test ambiguous, so a plant may be read as an obstacle in its neighbour |
| Every feature must lie inside the boundary it belongs to | A feature outside every boundary is subtracted from nothing, so tables are placed straight over ground you meant to keep clear |
Full preparation rules, including how each feature must be named for it to be read as water, a canal or a transmission line, are on Boundary file requirements.
If any ring is open or invalid, a Boundary Validation Issues window lists each problem boundary with a checkbox to exclude it and carry on with the rest. Excluding a boundary means that plant is not designed at all and does not appear in the summary. Cancel instead and fix the file if you need every plant.
The summary gains a row per plant
The summary table under the plot carries one row per plant, plus a TOTAL row that aggregates every plant on the site. The columns are the same in both: area, boundary length, table counts, modules, capacity, control rooms, inverters, cable lengths, arresters and — once energy has been calculated — the yield figures.
Read a multi-plot summary row by row before reading the total. A plant with a poor area-to-capacity ratio is visible immediately next to its neighbours, and it is usually a plant whose shape or corridors are costing it ground. Every column is defined in Summary table columns.
The table is wide, and with several plants it is also tall. Use the ⛶ Maximize button on the summary header to read it in a window of its own.
The main control room and unit substations
The main control room (MCR) is placed by hand, once, anywhere inside a boundary — see Site equipment. On a multi-plot site, placing it does something extra.
Place MCR drops a unit substation (USS) into every plot except the one holding the main control room. Each plot's control rooms then route their medium-voltage cables to the substation in their own plot, rather than across open ground to a building in a different plot. That mirrors how the site would actually be built: collection stays inside the parcel it belongs to, and only one circuit leaves each parcel.
- What it shows
- A multi-plot layout after placing the main control room: one plot carries the main control room, every other plot carries a unit substation.
- How to get there
- Load a multi-boundary file, generate, then Place MCR in one plot.
- Callouts to add
- Label the main control room and two unit substations.
The substation is drawn and cleared at the size set for USS in the Structures & Shadow group, and like every other structure it has a height that casts a shadow.
The link that is not routed for you
The connection from each unit substation to the main control room is not part of the automatic routing. It is an overhead line or a buried cable running between parcels, on its own right of way, and it is designed outside the application.
Because that link is not routed, its length is not included in the reported medium-voltage cable lengths. The figures in the summary cover the runs from the control rooms to their own plot's substation only. Add the substation-to-main-room lengths yourself before using the cable totals in an estimate.
The routed portion still merges sensibly: within a plot, control rooms whose routes converge share a trunk instead of running parallel lines, so the reported length is a trench-aware figure rather than the sum of straight-line distances. See Cable routing.
What the exports do with several plants
Every export covers the whole site in one file, and each handles the split differently:
- The PDF report draws the site as one drawing and carries the per-plant rows and the total in its summary, so the report is the document to hand over for the site as a whole.
- The Google Earth file gets one folder per plant, named after that plant, plus an overall summary folder aggregating every plant. That is the export to use when a reviewer wants to look at one plot at a time.
- The CAD drawing has one layer per feature type — boundaries, tables, control rooms, cables — not one layer per plant, so every plant's features share the same layers. See The CAD drawing.
Naming the plants
Each plant appears in the summary under the name its boundary carries in the file, and the exported Google Earth file uses the same name for that plant's folder. See Google Earth export.
Name the boundaries for the people who will read the report. Plot A,
Plot B, Plot C is enough to be unambiguous; the parcel or survey numbers
the landowner and the authority use are better, because a reviewer can then
match a summary row to a document without asking you which plot was which.
Rename them in Google Earth before loading the file — the names come from the
file and are not editable in the application.
Reading a multi-plot layout on screen
- Home (⌂) fits the view to the whole site, every plot included, which is the view to check that no plot was missed.
- ⛶ Expand Plot gives the drawing its own window, which is usually necessary before individual plots are legible.
- 🛰 Satellite is worth a look on a multi-plot site in particular. It shows the ground between the plots — the road, the canal, the neighbouring parcel — and that is where the link between the substations and the main control room will have to run.
Where to go next
Boundary file requirements
Closed rings, containment and the naming rules every feature follows
Summary table columns
Every column in the per-plant rows and the total row
Site equipment
Placing the main control room and the objects around it
Cable routing
What is routed, what is measured, and what is left to you
Cable routing and trenches
How DC, AC and medium-voltage runs are routed, what the conductor and trench totals mean, and how hand-drawn trenches change later runs.
Sketch Mode
The hand-editing surface — select, move, copy, delete, place tables, arresters, obstructions and cable trenches, and recompute the plant totals from your edits.