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Solar Design Lab vsEquipment Configurators
Enphase Designer, Tesla Designer, SolarEdge Designer Pro. The equipment manufacturers all ship slick design tools for their own gear. Great UI when you're staying inside one brand. The catch: they're configurators, not planset systems. Permit-ready output, mixed-brand designs, and tough jurisdictions all sit outside what they're built for.
What Equipment Configurators does well
- Best-in-class UI for designing within a single brand's equipment
- Free or near-free for installers who use that brand exclusively
- Equipment compatibility and string sizing handled natively for that vendor
Where it starts to break
As volume goes up, the workflow becomes the bottleneck.
Today's loop
Configureexport layoutredraw in CADroute to engineeringwaitsubmit
- Vendor lock-in: only their inverters, batteries, microinverters. Switch brands and you're back to drawing in CAD
- Output isn't a 100% planset. You get a layout and a string config, not a permit-ready set with SLD, conductor schedule, label package, and structural
- The electrical engineering happens somewhere else. Wire sizing, OCPD, voltage drop, and the conductor schedule all get redone downstream
- Can't handle tough jurisdictions: HVHZ Florida wind uplift, custom AHJ structural, anything requiring site-specific engineering documentation
- Mixed-brand jobs (e.g. SolarEdge inverter + Tesla battery) fall through the cracks of every single-vendor tool
The real limitation
They're configurators for one brand. They aren't the system that ships the permit-ready set.
A different approach
Your team does the design. The platform does the engineering, no manual CAD.
- Vendor-agnostic equipment library. Mix Enphase, Tesla, SolarEdge, Generac, anything on one canvas
- Any topology: microinverter + string + battery + supply-side tap on the same design
- Output is a real planset: SLD, conductor schedule, voltage drop, structural, BOM, AHJ-specific labels. The engineering derives live from the design
- No template lock-in. New equipment drops into the database and connects to everything the next day
- AHJ rules check live as you design, regardless of brand. $50 per planset, flat, no subscription
The workflow shift
The same job in fewer steps.
Equipment Configurators
Configureexport layoutredraw in CADroute to engineeringwaitsubmit
Solar Design Lab
Designcheckfile
Configurators are great for picking equipment. Design the whole system, any brand mix, and ship the planset from one engine.
Quick application · no credit card.