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When defining PV fields in a shading scene, PVsyst will always try to identify their orientations automatically, grouping all similar fields into the same orientations.
This is the normal behaviour because the field properties give all the information needed to do so.

Problems arise when the fields are not created with a regular layout, for example when they follow the ground slope, meaning that there are too many different orientations.
When this happens, we need to either increase the grouping tolerance or find other ways to get realistic orientations.

 

Here is a list of situations and how PVsyst will behave :

 

Helios3D

Fields are grouped by their nominal tilts and azimuths, so their baseslope will not affect the way they are grouped.

 
Zones of tables

Fields are grouped within the same zone, and with other zones if they share the same tilt and azimuth definitions.

 
Random scene

The first field is considered as a reference, then PVsyst tries to match other fields and if they don't it defines a new orientation.

 

For all scenarios, PVsyst then computes an average tilt and azimuth for each orientation from its fields.

This is the way orientations are defined automatically since PVsyst 6.64, but before that they were always defined using the "Random scene" algorithm which was not accurate enough and could lead to very odd orientation definitions. Also, there were no averages computed afterwards, the orientation tilt and azimuth were the ones from the first reference field.

 
Warning messages will pop up if you try to open an old variant with newly identified orientations that differ from the stored ones, therefore creating an incompatibility between the variant Orientation part and the shadings part. You can click on Yes and save your variant again to validate it again.