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As explained in Automatic identification, the way PVsyst defines orientations has changed significantly since version 6.64.
These changes greatly improved identification when working with Helios3D scenes, here is how.

 

PVsyst version 6.63 and lower

There were two scenarios for identifying orientations in a Helios3D scene :

•If the global spread of the fields normal vectors was over a given tolerance, the average was calculated and stored from all normal vectors of the scene.
This was leading to situations where PVsyst was considering only one average orientation when it should have had many, for example for scenes with a dome layout, or scene with fields on different sides of a hill.

•If the global spread was not too high, PVsyst tried to match fields together starting with the first one as a reference. This was also leading to illogical orientations with inaccurate averages, forcing users to increase tolerance until they only get one global orientations but still not appropriate.

 

Since PVsyst 6.64

PVsyst now automatically groups the fields from their nominal orientation, which means that :

•fields with the same tilt and azimuth but with a different slope (because they follow the ground slope) will be grouped together

•domes will define two orientations, one for the front panels and one for the back panels

•the orientation tilt and azimuth values are the average of all the fields linked in it

 

The maximum number of orientations is still 8 which means that if your scene contains too many different orientations, some fields will remain not grouped and you won't be able to perform the simulation.
But the new management tool allows you to group fields manually, so it is now possible to merge two groups of fields which have slightly different orientations in order to get 8 orientations total.

 

Reopening old variants

If you worked on Helios3D projects with older versions, you will be able to open them again in the newer ones and their orientations definitions won't change which means that you should get the exact same variant.
But if you import the H2P file once again in the shading scene, orientations will be different because the new algorithm will be used.