When some older systems are opened in PIPE-FLO 7.1, text is too small to read even with the text size set to the maximum. This article describes why this happens and some ways to deal with the problem.

In PIPE-FLO 6 and 7.0, as you zoomed in and out the text and symbol sizes remained fixed. The purpose of this was to make the symbols and text always remain a "clickable" size. Some users complained about this feature because they wanted a "What You See Is What You Get" approach like other CAD programs - particularly for large systems. With this behavior, engineers sometimes had trouble lining up text the way they wanted and when users of large systems zoomed out to see the entire drawing, the overlapping text cluttered the drawing so badly that the they could not see the general layout of the system. Consequently, the behavior was changed to operate more like other CAD and drawing packages.

The slider bar that appears when you convert from 7 to 7.1 has made the change to the new text system painless for the majority of users, but some users have had problems even with the maximum text size when converting some systems to 7.1. Part of the issue is how these systems were laid out in version 7.0. These systems tend to be extremely sparse (huge tracts of grid space between pipes). Many of these systems are so sparse and spread out that even the coarse grid becomes unusable.

Most of the time we find engineers draw the system this way believing that it will fix the text clutter problems from version 7.0. They often zoom far out before they begin working on the system. This is why most of these systems cover as much grid space as they do. The conversion from version 7.0 to version 7.1 did not really cause this problem so much as reveal its existence. Even with version 7.0, if you zoom in far enough to see the grid points, you have zoomed in so far that you can really only see one or two pipes.

There are two ways to solve this problem. The first method is to make the system behave like 7.0 did, with a fixed text size that doesn't change as you zoom in and out. The second method is to scale the system down so it is no longer so sparse.

The first solution (making 7.1 behave like 7.0) you can do yourself. When the system is first opened, use the slider bar to make the text as large as possible. Then zoom in until the text is the size you like. Next, bring up the drawing options dialog and click on "size adjustment" to get the slider bar back. Click the "lock sizes" check box. This will make the piping system behave as it did in version 7.0.

The second solution (scaling down the system) requires special software that Engineered Software does not release to the public. If you would like this procedure done to your system, please e-mail the system to solutions@eng-software.com and we will be happy to do it for you.