Keepouts and obstructions
Areas, trees and runs that remove modules and cast shade.
Reviewed
What this is for
What stands on the roof besides the array. It takes the modules out from under itself and, once you give it a height, casts a shadow across the rest of the design. It belongs to the design, not to one segment: applying re-lays every field segment it overlaps.
Three kinds: an area for a plant room, a tree for a canopy, a run for a cable tray or a walkway.
Steps
- Open Obstructions. Palette: Draw an area keepout, Drop a tree, Draw a run. Until you draw one, the list is empty.
- Removes modules and casts shade are separate switches. A plant room on this roof does both. A neighbour's chimney shades this roof and removes nothing from it.
- Height is measured from where it stands. Drawn wholly inside a field segment, it stands on that surface. Crossing the boundary, it is measured from the ground - so a parapet nudged a little past its own roof outline can quietly stop shading anything. The designer warns, because nothing on the canvas shows which of the two it is using.
- Select, then drag to move. A drag that starts on an obstruction nobody has selected still pans the imagery. Alt+drag copies one where you drop it. Size is a field, not a handle: a tree has a canopy radius and a run a half width, both on the panel. An area is the outline that was drawn and cannot be reshaped - draw the replacement, then delete the old one.
- Shade is drawn here, for the day and hours on the Shade chip above the imagery - what the obstructions throw, and what tilted racking throws on the row behind it. Nothing leaves the layout because of it. What is worth building is decided on the Shading rail, against one cutoff for the whole design.
Set one setback or height on every obstruction is the bulk edit on the list head.
Tips and common mistakes
- A keepout is not a horizon. The far skyline lives on the condition set and shades everything at once.
- Deleting an obstruction gives back the modules it was removing. Shade removal on the Shading rail is a different store and Restore all puts those back too.
- Copy keepouts from another design on the Design rail when the survey is the same roof.