A 1 GW site has ten times the tables of a 100 MW site, many more kilometres of road and cable, and a terrain model several times larger. PVX.Cad handles sites of that size inside AutoCAD. This page covers the four choices that decide whether a gigawatt project stays easy to work on: the workstation, the terrain grid, how you split the plant into PV areas, and the order you work in.
1. The workstation
PVX.Cad runs inside full AutoCAD or Civil 3D, versions 2021 to 2027, on 64-bit Windows. AutoCAD LT cannot load plugins, so it does not work.
| Site size | RAM |
|---|---|
| Up to 500 MW | 16 GB minimum |
| 500 MW and larger, including 1 GW sites | 32 GB |
Use a graphics card that Autodesk certifies for your AutoCAD version. Heavy computations such as grading and cable routing run in the PVX cloud services, so the workstation mainly needs memory for the drawing itself.
2. Choose the terrain grid for the size of the site
Every later step works on the terrain grid: grading, collision checks, volumes and adapting terrain to piles. The grid spacing is chosen on the first import and stays locked for the project, so choose it for the whole site.
- Survey data on smaller sites: a spacing close to your pile spacing gives the most useful detail.
- Large sites: go coarser. Satellite elevation from a KML boundary defaults to 10 m, which suits gigawatt-scale feasibility.
- Never finer than the data: a 1 m grid on 30 m elevation data adds weight without adding detail.
One import can create up to 8 million grid cells. That is roughly an 8.5 km square at 3 m spacing, or about 28 km at 10 m. If a site is larger than that, split it into several drawings.
3. Split the plant into PV areas
For sites of around 500 MW and up, draw the plant as several PV areas instead of one large boundary, for example one per block, feeder or land parcel. In PVX.Cad each PV area is its own electrical unit:
- Its own electrical plan. Each PV area has its own configuration (inverters, transformers, strings per inverter), and device numbering continues across areas instead of restarting.
- Work on one area without touching the others. Clear All buttons and Regenerate Cabling act on the PV areas you pick. A new layout in one area keeps the electrical design of the areas it does not touch.
- Quantities stay site-wide. The Bill of Quantities counts every PV area, and the cable workbook writes one sheet per area.
4. Work area by area, then check the whole site
- Import terrain once for the full site at the grid spacing chosen above.
- Draw the PV areas, roads and exclusions.
- Lay out each area. Use Capacity Iteration to reach the capacity each area needs, with the row spacing, ground coverage ratio or shading angle as the variable.
- String and place devices area by area, then generate cabling for each area.
- Export quantities for the whole site: the Bill of Quantities, pile workbook and cable workbook cover every area.
Grading and collision checks work the same way: run them on the PV areas that need them instead of reshaping ground the layout does not touch.
Try it on your own site
The two-week trial is self-serve: create your account at id.pvx.ai, install PVX.Cad on your own AutoCAD, and import the boundary of your largest site.
- Start the two-week trial
- Book a demo if you would rather see a gigawatt-scale site with an engineer first.
- Moving a large project from PVcase? See how the PVcase import works.
