Hi Dan,
There are a few different representations of shading in SAM. For example, for PV, there's self-shading with its various flavors, and beam shading factors that can be imported or calculated by the Shade Calculator.
Can you tell me more what you are trying to model in PySAM?
In general, a good way to get things set up in PySAM is to create a case in SAM with the inputs as you would like them, and then use the code generator (click
Generate code from the case menu, by clicking the carrot "v" on the case tab) to export the inputs as "PySAM JSON" as described here:
nrel-pysam.readthedocs.io/en/master/Import.html.
Best regards,
Paul.