Getting help
The guide inside the application, the pages in this documentation, how to reach a person, and what to include so a report can be acted on.
Help comes from three places, in this order: the guide inside the application, these pages, and SolarLayout itself. Work down the list — the first two are immediate, and the third goes faster when you arrive with the right details. Inside the application, the Docs button in the top toolbar opens this site directly in your browser, so you don't need to search for it.
The guide inside the application
The application carries its own guide, so it is available with no internet connection and no second window to find.
Press F1, or use Help ▸ How to Use This Tool. The guide opens in its own window, with its sections on tabs, and covers the application's inputs and tools.
- What it shows
- The Help menu open with both items readable.
- How to get there
- Click Help in the menu bar.
The boundary-preparation guide is separate and more specific. Click the ⓘ button beside Browse… in the Input KMZ File row. It covers how to prepare the file you are about to load: the plant boundary as a closed polygon, water bodies, transmission lines and obstructions, and the fact that every feature has to lie inside a boundary. Read it before you draw the file rather than after: a file that follows those rules loads without a validation complaint, and its water bodies, corridors and obstructions are all recognised. The same ground is covered in Boundary file requirements.
A few figures in the in-application guide are out of date, including the control room and lightning arrester footprints it quotes. Take structure sizes from the fields in your own input panel, and take defaults and ranges from Every parameter and its default.
When the question is about a file you loaded
Two more things inside the application answer questions on their own, before anyone else is involved. Next to a loaded module file, View opens a read-only viewer of everything read from it — the basic data, the sizes and technology, the model parameters, and the current and power curves drawn from the values it declares. Next to a loaded inverter file, View does the same for the inverter's main parameters, efficiency curve and output parameters.
If a yield or a string length looks wrong, open the viewer first. It shows what the application actually read, which is not always what the datasheet says.
This documentation
Three pages answer most questions without anyone else being involved.
| Page | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Troubleshooting | A symptom — nothing placed, no cable lengths, a missing report page — and the setting behind it |
| Every parameter and its default | What a field does, what it defaults to, and the range it accepts |
| Glossary | A term or abbreviation used in the interface or in these pages |
Licence messages have their own page: Licence problems lists every message the licence check produces, what each one means, and what to do about it.
Contacting a person
Write to sales@solarlayout.app.
That is the route for all of it — a new licence, a renewal, a reissue for a new machine, and any problem these pages do not resolve. Include the details in the checklist below so the first reply can be a useful one.
Two things these pages deliberately do not cover, because they are not properties of the application: what the product costs, and how long a licence period runs. Both are commercial questions for the same address. What the documentation does cover is everything on your side of the licence — activation, the Device ID, and every message the check can produce.
What to include in a report
A report that carries its own evidence is usually answered in one exchange. One that does not takes several. Include as much of this as applies:
- What you were doing. The mounting and electrical mode you chose at launch, which step you had reached, and what you clicked last.
- The exact message text, if there was one. Copy the wording rather than describing it — the wording identifies which check or which stage stopped, and that is usually most of the diagnosis. Include any date or name the message quotes.
- What you expected, and what happened instead. One sentence each. "I expected tables across the north half; the north half is empty."
- The boundary file, if the problem concerns the layout. Send the file you loaded, unedited. Almost every layout question — missing tables, a band with nothing in it, an obstruction that had no effect — is answered by reading the file.
- The project file, if you can save one. File ▸ Save Project… stores the whole session: inputs, the layout, sketch edits, the diagram, the bill of materials and terrain. It reproduces what you were looking at without anyone having to guess at your inputs. See Saving and reopening a project.
- Your Device ID, if the problem concerns the licence. Check the access-status chip in the top toolbar first — it already tells you whether you're Active, have No active access, or your Access expired/was revoked — then open Help ▸ License / Subscription… and use the Copy button for the Device ID — never retype it. See Activate your licence.
- The version you are running, shown in the bottom status bar of the main window (for example v1.1.0).
Send it as one message with the files attached. A report that arrives in pieces is answered in pieces, and every round trip adds delay.
After an unexpected error
If the message read "An unexpected error occurred, but the application will keep
running.", include the log as well. The details are appended to a file named
solarlayout_error.log in the Windows temporary folder — type %TEMP% into the
address bar of File Explorer to open it. Attach the file itself rather than a
screenshot of it, and say roughly when the error happened, because the file
accumulates every error the application has reported.
Send screenshots of the interface, not of numbers
A screenshot is the fastest way to show a window, a message or a layout that looks wrong. It is the slowest way to communicate figures — nobody can compare columns from an image. For anything numeric, send the project file, or export the report and send that.