Avila Solar Drafting turns a complete intake package into an AHJ-ready plan set in 2-3 business days, or 1-2 business days on a Fast Roof order. The installer supplies site, structural, equipment and utility data; we gather what is missing, draft the sheet set, and put every project through an independent review by a senior designer who did not draft it before the file is released.
Key takeaways
- Standard plan sets ship in 2-3 business days, Fast Roof in 1-2, and in 1-2 business days when an aerial measurement file comes with the order.
- The clock starts when the intake package is complete, not when the order is placed. Missing busbar ratings and framing spans are the usual reason a job waits.
- Every plan set is scrutinized by a senior designer who was not involved in the initial drafting. That is an independent second pass, not a self-check.
- Free revisions run for six months from the order date, covering AHJ comments and scope changes alike.
- Avila produces the documents. The installer submits them, pulls the permit and holds the licence — we do not file on your behalf.
What happens between the order and the delivered plan set?
Six stages: intake, data gathering, design and drafting, independent quality review, delivery, and revisions. Only the first is driven by the installer, and it is the one that decides how quickly the other five run.
| Stage | Who does it | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Intake | Installer | The order plus site, structural, equipment, utility and jurisdiction data |
| 2. Data gathering | Avila | A complete design brief, or a short list of questions back to you |
| 3. Design and drafting | Avila designer | Sheet set, calculations, equipment schedules |
| 4. Independent QA review | A second, senior designer | Corrections caught before you ever see the file |
| 5. Delivery | Avila | PDF plan set, stamped sheets where in scope, CAD on request |
| 6. Revisions | Both | Updated sheets for AHJ comments or scope changes, free for six months |
Stage one is where a two-day plan set and a two-week plan set separate, and it is entirely in your hands. If you are ordering solar plan sets for the first time, read it twice.
What does the installer send at intake?
Six categories of information: the site, the electrical service, the structure, the equipment, the utility, and the jurisdiction. A package that covers all six is a package we can draft from without coming back to you once.
- Site. Address and parcel, roof plane dimensions, pitch and azimuth, obstruction locations, and an aerial measurement file if you have one.
- Electrical service. Main service panel photographs with the deadfront off, the panel label, busbar and main breaker ratings, meter and service entrance.
- Structure. Rafter or truss size, on-center spacing, clear span, deck material and thickness, and the number of existing roofing layers.
- Equipment. Module, inverter, racking and rapid-shutdown device by exact make and model number, not by brand.
- Utility. The serving utility, the account or meter number, and whether an interconnection application has already been filed.
- Jurisdiction. The AHJ that will review the package, and the code cycle it has adopted if you already know it.
The item that stalls the most jobs is the busbar rating: it decides the interconnection method, and it lives on a label most techs photograph from too far away. The second is clear span. “2×6 at 24 inches” is not a structural input on its own — a 2×6 spanning eight feet and one spanning fourteen feet are different buildings.
If your intake varies from crew to crew, fix it upstream rather than in the drafting queue. Our solar site survey checklist is organised by which plan sheet each item feeds, so a tech can see why the number matters.
How is site and utility data gathered and checked?
We reconcile what you sent against what the sheets have to prove, resolve the jurisdiction’s submittal format and adopted code cycle, and confirm the interconnection path before anything is drawn. Gaps come back to you as specific questions, not as a generic hold.
Aerial measurement handles roof geometry well and is the biggest lever on speed: a Roof Order or EagleView XML supplied with a Fast Roof order brings the package back in 1-2 business days. It covers none of the electrical service, framing or equipment siting, so it supplements the survey rather than replacing it.
Submittal requirements are gathered per jurisdiction rather than assumed, and they are more prescriptive than most installers expect. Oregon’s Building Codes Division prescriptive rooftop PV checklist requires the site plan to be provided “in accordance with the municipality’s submission requirements” and to show “the required firefighter access and escape pathways” — the state form defers to the city, and the city has its own list.
The City of Portland’s residential solar submittal list shows what that city-level list looks like: structural design criteria stamped by an Oregon Registered Design Professional with design snow load, wind speed and panel dead load, a site plan, a fire access path, a roof framing plan, a roof cross-section, and racking attachment details. It also states plainly that “all plans must be drawn to scale” — sketches, screenshots and photographs are not accepted.
Utility data belongs at this stage rather than later, because the interconnection method has to be settled before the single line diagram is drawn. Changing it afterwards is not an edit, it is a redraw of the electrical sheet.
What happens during design and drafting?
One designer owns the project from brief to first draft: array layout, attachment details, conductor and overcurrent sizing, the single line diagram and the labelling sheet. Every number on one sheet has to reconcile with every number on the others, and that reconciliation is the actual work.
Layout comes first, because it constrains everything downstream: plane selection, module count, row spacing, fire access pathways and setbacks, obstruction clearances, and an attachment pattern the framing can carry. It is checked against the shade and production model that was sold.
Then the electrical. Under NFPA 70, the National Electrical Code, continuous inverter output current is sized at 125 percent — NEC 2023 690.8(B) — while the busbar check is a separate rule: NEC 2023 705.12(B)(3)(2) allows the main breaker and the backfeed breaker together to reach 120 percent of the busbar rating. Those two percentages get mixed up constantly, and mixing them produces a diagram that fails on arithmetic a plan checker can do in their head.
Which edition applies is a per-jurisdiction question. Adopted cycles are spread across several NEC editions, so rapid shutdown, disconnect placement and interconnection language are written to the cycle the reviewing AHJ has adopted rather than the newest one published. Our explainer on the NEC articles that govern a solar plan set covers which article governs which part of the package.
String configuration is settled here too, against module temperature coefficients and the inverter MPPT window rather than a rule of thumb — see our guide to calculating solar string size. For residential work, our residential design walkthrough covers the same ground from the installer’s side.
How does the plan set account for jurisdiction requirements?
By treating them as a per-project input rather than a general body of knowledge. There is no national submittal standard, so requirements are resolved for the specific AHJ before drafting and written into the sheets rather than applied afterwards.
How jurisdictions differ is covered properly elsewhere on this site, and repeating it here would only give you a worse version. Start with the permitting requirements that catch installers out, then the solar permitting process from start to finish for the stage-by-stage sequence. If you are diagnosing a correction notice rather than preparing a submittal, why solar permits get rejected is the faster route. For state-level specifics, see Texas plan sets and Washington DC permitting.
Who checks the plan set before it goes out?
Every project is scrutinized by a senior designer who was not involved in the initial drafting. It is an independent review rather than a self-check: the reviewer comes to the package cold, without the assumptions the original designer worked from, and runs a fixed checklist before the file is released.
The reason to structure it that way is narrow and specific. A drafter cannot un-know their own reading of a site photograph. If they read a panel label as a 225 A busbar, every calculation downstream inherits that reading, and asking them to check their own work re-checks the same assumption with the same eyes. A second designer reads the label from scratch. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the reviewer is a different person rather than a later pass by the same one.
The review is a checklist, not an impression:
- Calculations recomputed, not confirmed. Continuous output current, conductor ampacity and derating, overcurrent sizing, and the interconnection method checked against the busbar rating read off the panel photograph rather than off the design brief.
- Cross-sheet consistency. Equipment locations on the site plan match the single line diagram, the roof plan matches the structural details, and the labelling sheet matches what gets installed.
- Jurisdiction fit. Adopted code cycle, sheet size and submittal format, and any local note the AHJ expects to see stated explicitly rather than implied.
- Buildability. Whether a crew can install what is drawn, where it is drawn, with the clearances shown — the question a plan checker will not ask and an inspector will.
The original drafter can re-check their arithmetic. They cannot re-check their own assumption. That is what the second designer is for.
Can an automated code check do the same job?
Not the same job, no. Automated review catches everything that can be written as a rule. Independent human review catches the detail that is technically compliant and practically wrong.
The U.S. Department of Energy describes SolarAPP+ as a platform that “conducts an automated permitting review for safety and code compliance, enabling local governments that adopt the tool to approve solar permits instantly,” with more complex systems re-routed for manual review. That is genuinely useful, and where a jurisdiction has adopted it the compliance floor rises for everyone.
What a rules engine will not flag is a disconnect sited where the meter reader cannot reach it, a conduit run crossing a fire access pathway, or a label correct for the inverter you ordered and wrong for the one actually in your warehouse. Rules catch rule violations. A second designer catches judgement, which is why the review step is a person rather than a script.
This is the step that makes a plan set designed to pass first-time review, and it is a fair thing to ask any drafting partner about. If you are evaluating providers, how to judge solar plan set quality sets out what else to look for, and what to avoid when making solar plans covers the failure modes an independent review exists to intercept.
What is in the delivered package?
A complete PDF sheet set — cover sheet, site plan, roof plan with array layout, structural attachment details, single line diagram, and a labelling and placard sheet — plus equipment cut sheets and whatever calculations the jurisdiction requires. Stamped sheets and CAD files where they are in scope.
Residential packages typically run six sheets. Commercial packages keep the same spine and add structural calculations with a ballast layout or penetration schedule, a three-line diagram, and equipment schedules — the differences are set out in our piece on what changes above residential, and the service itself is commercial solar PV design.
Where the jurisdiction requires a licensed professional’s seal, PE and SE engineering stamps are ordered alongside the plan set rather than chased afterwards. Whether you need one is a jurisdiction-and-project question, and when a solar project needs a PE stamp works through the triggers.
For a sheet-by-sheet account of what each drawing has to show, our breakdown of a permit-ready plan set goes deeper than this overview does.
How long does it take, and what makes it slip?
2-3 business days for a standard plan set, 1-2 for Fast Roof, and 1-2 business days when a Roof Order or EagleView file accompanies a Fast Roof order. The clock starts when the intake package is complete.
That last sentence is the whole of it. An order placed on Monday with a missing busbar rating is not a Monday order; it becomes one whenever the photograph arrives. The things that reliably add days:
- A panel label photograph that cannot be read, or a service panel documented without the deadfront removed.
- Framing described by size without a clear span.
- Equipment given by brand rather than model number, which makes the labelling sheet and the compatibility check guesswork.
- A jurisdiction-specific form or affidavit only the licensed contractor can sign.
- Structural conditions that turn out to need a stamped review that was not ordered.
None of these are drafting problems. They are intake problems surfacing as drafting delays, which is why stage one gets the attention it does. The throughput argument in full is in our comparison of outsourced solar design versus in-house.
How do revisions work?
Free revisions run for six months from the order date. Send AHJ comments or a scope change through the portal and we turn the corrected sheets around; there is no separate revision order to place and no per-sheet charge inside that window.
Two kinds of revision arrive. The first is a correction notice from the plan checker: a note the jurisdiction wants stated differently, a dimension called out, a calculation shown on the sheet rather than in an appendix. Send those verbatim rather than paraphrased — they go back through the same independent review as the original.
The second is a scope change on your side — the customer added a battery, the crew found a second layer of shingles, the module went out of stock. Same route, same window, except that a scope change can pull the structural or interconnection calculation back open, so flag it early.
The correction notices you do receive are worth reading as a set. They cluster into a handful of causes, most fixable at intake rather than in the redraw.
Where does Avila’s work stop and yours begin?
Avila produces the documents. You submit them. We are not a permit expediter: the application, the licence it is filed under, the fees, the inspections and the correspondence with the plan checker all stay with the installer.
It is worth being blunt about, because “we handle permitting” is a phrase the industry uses loosely. Jurisdictions require the licensed contractor of record or the property owner to apply, and on your project we are neither. What we supply is the drawing package the application is built on, plus the revisions when the reviewer comes back.
In practice the split is clean. You collect the site data and place the order; we produce and independently review the plan set; you file it, pay the fees and schedule inspection; if a correction notice lands, you forward it and we redraft. Running a pre-submittal check before you file is the cheapest quality gate available to you.
The same division applies to the work more broadly: outsourcing solar drafting moves the drafting capacity, not the licence or the liability for the installation.
Who can order, and where do you not work?
The process is built for solar installers, EPCs and electrical contractors. Homeowner-direct orders go through the same form and carry a separate development and consultancy fee on top of the plan set price, covering the extra consultation those projects need (every business is exempt — the fee applies only to homeowners running their own project) — see current terms at signup.
There is a short list of places we do not take projects: APS and SRP service territory in Arizona, the City of Phoenix, the City of Peoria, Los Angeles County in California. Everywhere else in the United States is in scope, and we would rather say so at intake than at delivery.
FAQ
How long does it take to get a solar plan set from Avila Solar Drafting?
Standard plan sets are delivered in 2-3 business days and Fast Roof plan sets in 1-2 business days, with 1-2 business days available when a Roof Order or EagleView measurement file is supplied with the order. The clock starts when the intake package is complete, not when the order is placed.
What does the installer need to send at intake?
Six categories: site and roof geometry, electrical service photographs including the panel label and busbar rating, framing size and clear span, equipment by exact model number, the serving utility and interconnection status, and the reviewing AHJ.
Who reviews the plan set before it is delivered?
A senior designer who was not involved in the initial drafting. The review is independent rather than a self-check: it recomputes the calculations, checks consistency across sheets, confirms jurisdiction fit and tests buildability before the file is released.
How long are revisions free?
Six months from the order date. AHJ correction notices and scope changes are both covered inside that window and re-run through the same independent review as the original drawings.
Does Avila submit the permit application?
No. Avila produces the documents and the installer submits them. The application, the licence it is filed under, the fees, the inspections and the correspondence with the plan checker all remain with the installer.
Does Avila work directly with homeowners?
Occasionally. Homeowner-direct projects are ordered through the same form and carry a separate development and consultancy fee in addition to the plan set price (every business is exempt — the fee applies only to homeowners running their own project) — see current terms at signup. The service is otherwise built for installers and EPCs.
Start your next plan set
There is one input to this process you control, and it is the first one. Send a complete intake package and the rest runs on a schedule you can plan installs against.
Avila Solar Drafting delivers standard plan sets in 2-3 business days and Fast Roof in 1-2, every one scrutinized by a senior designer who did not draft it, backed by our guarantee of accurate solar plan sets and six months of free revisions from the order date — designed to pass first-time review.
Commercial, utility-scale, or an unusual structural condition you want scoped before ordering? Call 971-410-0655.
