Dear A.C.,
SAM's 3D Shade Calculator stores and reads 3D scene data from files in the .s3d format. It cannot directly read files in other formats. The LK scripting functionality does make it possible for you to write your own file reader to create a scene from data in a file with a different format, but we do not have that functionality built in to the user interface.
There is no limit to the number of active surfaces and shading objects that you can draw in the 3D Shade Calculator scene. How the shade calculator assigns shade loss data to subarrays in SAM depends on how you assign values to the Subarray and String properties. If you assign Subarray = 1 and String = 1 to all active surfaces in the scene, SAM will calculate a single table of shade losses and apply it to Subarray 1 in SAM based on the shadows on all of the active surfaces. In this case, if you generate shade data as a time series CSV file, it will generate a single column of shading values.
SAM can model PV systems with up to 4 subarrays, and its partial shading model can handle subarrays with up to 8 strings per subarray, so the 3D Shade Calculator allows you to assign active surfaces to up to 4 subarrays and 8 strings. The calculator generates shade data for each string in each subarray. If your scene had the maximum number of subarrays and strings, the time series CSV files would contain 32 columns of data.
When you click "Save and Close" in the 3D Shade Calculator, it calculates shade data based on the objects in the scene, and then applies the resulting data to SAM's inputs in the Edit Shading window. You should be sure that the number of subarrays you enable on the System Design input page is the same as the number of subarrays you use in the scene. For example, if the System Design page has two subarrays enabled, in the shading scene you should set Subarray = 1 to some active surfaces in the field, and Subarray = 2 to the others. Similarly, the number of strings you allocate to each subarray on the System Design page should match the strings you specify in the shading scene. You can verify that the shade data was assigned correctly to the subarrays and strings by clicking the "Edit Shading" button on the Shading and Snow input page for each subarray.
Please don't hesitate to follow up if you have other questions or need help setting up your first scene. I would recommend running a series of tests to understand how the calculator works and interacts with SAM before you start your work.
Best regards,
Paul.
