Overview
Corridors split the racks of a PV area into blocks. In the Corridor Pattern editor you set, per PV area and per direction, a list of steps: how many rows or columns come before the corridor, how wide it is, and whether it becomes a Road or a Gap. The steps repeat across the whole area, so patterns such as 5 rows, road, 3 rows, gap are possible.
- A road corridor becomes a service road (SR-1, SR-2 and so on) with a setback on each side and rounded junctions.
- A gap corridor is open ground with no road. It is drawn as one closed polyline from edge to edge on the PVXAI_Corridor_Gap layer, which does not plot.
The pattern is used by fixed, east-west and tracker builds, with Center Grid, the edge-start directions and Draw Alignment, and by Capacity Iteration.
Prerequisites
One or more PV areas, and in Build Layout a rack selected and the spacing set: the editor reads the table spacing to work out the narrowest allowed gap.
Step-by-Step Guide
1. Open the editor
In Build Layout, go to the Corridor section, switch Enable on and click Edit corridor…. If Enable is off, the editor opens but tells you that Build Layout will not open any corridor until you switch it on.
2. Pick the PV area
Choose the area under PV area. The status line says whether it uses the global corridor settings or has its own pattern. As soon as you change a step, the area gets its own pattern.
3. Pick the direction
Use the East-west corridors tab for corridors between blocks of rows (the step count is Rows before gap) and the North-south corridors tab for corridors between blocks of columns (Columns before gap).
4. Build the steps
Click + Add step for each step and set its count, Width and what it Becomes (Road or Gap). Clear distance shows the table-to-table distance the build will leave: road width plus the setback on both sides for a road, the gap width for a gap. Use Corridors become to switch every step at once: Roads at every gap, Gaps only, no roads or Custom: choose per gap.
A gap cannot be narrower than the table spacing on the layout page in that direction. If you enter less, the editor widens it and says so.
5. Check the preview
The Preview draws the pattern over the area. Click a corridor to switch it between road and gap; hover over it to see every repeat of its step. The counts line shows the approximate number of tables, road corridors and gap corridors.
6. Set the road values
The Roads box holds Horizontal Setback, Vertical Setback and Corner Radius for corridor roads. These apply to every PV area in the drawing.
7. Save and build
Use Apply to all PV areas to copy the open pattern to every area, or Use global settings to drop an area’s own pattern. Click Save, then Build in Build Layout. The pattern is stored on the PV area: Ctrl+Z undoes a change, and erasing the PV area erases its pattern.
Tips & Recommendations
- Use gaps where you need open ground without a paved road, for example a fire break or a strip kept for later works.
- Clear Racks removes the gap polylines together with the racks.
- With Draw Alignment, rows fill outward from your line on both sides and the corridor steps are counted outward from the line.
- On tracker sites, corridors are kept when a manual road crosses the PV area. A corridor road may cross the manual road but never runs along it.