Design Requests

Solesca's Design Requst feature allows you to request a design directly through our app.

Any user can request a design. This allows you to have your origination and management team as view users who request designs from your designers or from our experts here at Solesca. These view users can then view the design results and download any relevant files. Likewise, you can have designers or engineers request designs for themselves or their team to track and save project changes.

Every design request that is completed is locked and saved for record-keeping purposes. You can easily duplicate a design to change any aspect you like after the design request is completed.

Once a design is created, the person who is assigned the design will receive a notification to complete it. Likewise, when a design is completed the person who requested the design will receive a notification that it is completed.

Creating a Design Request

To create a design request, go to Design Requests (opens in a new tab), click "+ Design Request", and go through the steps to create a request. During the steps you can select to:

1. Request a new project internally

2. Request a revision on an existing project internally

3. Request a new project and design through our experts at Solesca

Design Details

While each step requires slightly different data, the inputs remain the same. For all projects you must input either an address or the latitude and longitude for the site location which is used to automatically route users to the design when opening as well as to place images. You must also enter a unique design request name.

For each design you have the option to select from these request types:

• Max AC/DC: Used to tell the designer that there are hard limits to either the DC or AC size of a project. An example would be a utility interconnection limit of 3MWAC where the property can hold more than 3MWAC of solar.

• Max Roof/Property: Used to tell the designer to put the maximum amount of solar on a given parcel or rooftop without an AC or DC size limit or target.

• Optimize Design: Used to tell the designer to use their best judgement in value engineering a system. You can suggest DC and AC sizes but those are not hard limits.

• Target AC/DC: Used to tell the designer to design to this specific DC and AC size. Primarily, this is for replicating designs or designing to a very specific configuration that is known by the requestor for the project.

All design requests allow you to select a design template and suggest modules and inverters to use for this project.

The notes section allows you contain any data not captured in the above fields. Anything that the requestor would like to see from this design that is custom for this project and/or deviates from internal standards can be input here. Feel free to be as verbose as you wish or to leave completely blank (though your designers may take more liberties than you wish if left empty...)

Uploads

You can upload multiple files to each design request. You will be able to see every file you uploaded and delete as needed. Each file will be uploaded directly to the project location on the design page, making it so that the person designing has direct access to all the files needed directly when design:withing.

Please keep these files smaller than 4MB each for optimal uploading.

Interal Requests

New Project

New projects will automatically create a new project and design for you when requesting a design. Use this when this project is completely new to your organization and you want a new project created.

When requesting a new project internally you are required to enter a unique project and design name as well as assign the design to a designer on your team. You can modify the designer later if you wish.

In order to proceed to the uploads page the design request name, new project name, new design name, designer, and address must all be populated.

Revision

Revisions are used when the project is already created but you want a new design for it. This is here so that you can track different renditions of the design directly within the Solesca app.

To create a revision you will need to select an existing project and design to copy.

Once an existing project and design is selected, you need to input the design request name and designer before being able to move to the uploads page.

Solesca Consulting

We have the option for you to request a new project and design directly through our experts here at Solesca. This option functions the same as our New Project with the exception that it is assigned to Solesca instead of to one of your designers.

For 0.5 SOL-credits our in-house experts will design the project to your specifications in the design request. We have a guaranteed 2-day turnaround time and create the design directly in your organization projects, allowing you to take our work and easily build upon it after completing. If your team is overloaded with internal work, feel free to use us to provide quick and quality designs.

For these requests, you must enter a design template so that our experts know how you would like the design to be made. Also, please be as explicit as possible in the notes. Without detailed notes, we will use our best judgement on making the best design possible. Each reuqest to our experts comes with 1 revision. Our revision policy covers if we deviate from these inputs or miss something; it does not cover if you do not describe what is needed during the request.

In order to create a request to Solesca consulting you need to enter all the details that you would for a New Project with the addition of specifying the design template.

Design Requests Table

The design requests table is your one-stop shop for viewing design requests. You can filter by the name. You can select the project or design, directly taking you to the project table or design editor page. You can change the requestor and designer. You can also view the design request details by clicking any other cell.

If the design request is completed that column will populate with the completed date. This allows you to track the turnaround time for design requests and easily view which requests are completed.

Designing & Completing a Design

Every design request is meant to be used to create a new design. We create the design for you and automatically place your uploads at the project location. When editing a design-requested design a green checkmark icon will appear in the upper-right hand side of your screen directly to the left of the simulate button. You can view the design request details by clicking that button.

The opened dialogue box will show you all the details input by the requestor. Once the design is completed, you can navigate back to here to complete the design request. By clicking the "Complete design request" button you will be prompted for confirmation and then will have completed the design. Completing the design locks the design from editing. You will still be able to simulate and download all of the downloads.

To modify, you can create a revision request or just copy the design.

When completed, the design is locked and the dialogue box that this button opens is be marked as completed.