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- You have tank levels from your process control data interface that you want to feed back into PIPE-FLO and see how your system should be running with this tank condition.
- You want to compare plant flow rates and control valve status with calculated PIPE-FLO values to monitor for possible process issues.
- You want to decrease the pipe diameter of all pipes in you system with a fluid velocity less than 2 ft/s to prevent sediment in the pipeline.
- Your customer has decided on a different naming scheme for their pipelines and you have just completed designing their system of 14,000 pipelines in PIPE-FLO and dread going back to rename them pipe by pipe. By pulling them into Excel, manipulating the names, then importing them back into PIPE-FLO, you can accomplish the task in minutes.
In this example, we have set flow rates through four heat exchangers which we want to control. This data will be fed into the PIPE-FLO system X-Link Tutorial.pipe which will then calculate the necessary valve positions. Once the valve positions are calculated, we will compare the % open valve data from PIPE-FLO with data coming in from the plant's Process Instrument Controller (PIC). Before beginning, you will need to first download the X-Link Tutorial.pipe system as well as the Valve PIC data.xls spreadsheet attached to this knowledge base article.
1) Open both the PIPE-FLO system X-Link Tutorial.pipe and the Excel spreadsheet Valve PIC data.xls. If the spreadsheet is opened before the PIPE-FLO system, you will need to refresh the spreadsheet by pressing the "read data from PIPE-FLO into Controls" button located on the Excel toolbar and looks like this: 
Notice in the PIPE-FLO system, the four Flow Control Valves (FCV) are all set to 250gpm each. Notice the Excel spreadsheet already has FCV data from PIPE-FLO imported/linked to it (see Knowledge Base article 1444 for how to do this). The blue columns within the spreadsheet are data which has come from process instrumentation within our plant. The yellow columns represent information that is defined or calculated within PIPE-FLO which we want to compare with the PIC data.
2) Right now, you can see the plant flow rate data does not match up with our PIPE-FLO analysis. We will use the X-Link function "pfeAssign" to assign the flow rate in the blue boxes of the spreadsheet into PIPE-FLO. Click once on the cell K6 to activate it then type =pfeAssign(A6,"lineup.lineup1",G6)
a. The pfeAssign command takes on the form =pfeAssign(name, code, value) where the name and code must be in quotations unless they are selected from another cell. In our example, A6 need not be in quotes because it was a cell selection but if we were to type in CW-FC-04 directly, it would need to be in quotations.
b. The lineup.lineup1 code refers to the set value of a control. As you switch between lineups within your PIPE-FLO system, this value can change depending on that lineups set value is.
c. For more information on functions, function codes, and lineup values, select the yellow question mark button on the Excel toolbar which looks like this: 
and select the desired content in the Help Contents menu.
3) Assign the same function to the remaining FCVs by dragging the K6 cell down to K9. Go to your PIPE-FLO system and notice the FCVs have been set to the values assigned in the spreadsheet.
4) Now we must update the other values (in yellow) pulled from PIPE-FLO to reflect the new FCV values. Press the "read data from PIPE-FLO into Controls" button located on the Excel toolbar and looks like this:
5) You will now see PIPE-FLO's calculated values of % Open for the four FCVs. You can now compare the calculated values with the values in column "H" which were imported into the Excel spreadsheet from a Process Instrument Controller (PIC) such as AspenTech or OSISoft. Notice valves CW-FC-04 and CW-FC-01 are operating near their calculated values. However, CW-FC-02 is operating in a more constricted position, indicating the possible need for service and CW-FC-02 is operating in a more open positioning indicating a possible line blockage.
6) To further clean up your spreadsheet, you can hide the column with the "pfeAssign" commands by selecting column K, right clicking and select "Hide". You can arrange the FCVs in ascending order by clicking on the "Control List" title cell then selecting the "Sort Ascending" button on the Excel toolbar. Also note that conditional formatting in Excel has been utilized to make values for the plant data appear red and bold if they differ from the PIPE-FLO data by more than 5%.
Additional Notes:
* There are many different Query Codes available to pull from PIPE-FLO. The complete list can be found by clicking on the yellow question mark on the Excel tool bar next to the other PIPE-FLO buttons, then select the Function Codes on the left for a list and description of all the codes available.
* Any components with a quotation in them will not import/export with the Excel macro functions. For example, LWM-3"pipe will not import/export into Excel.
* It's important to note that when an item name is changed in PIPE-FLO, it will not update in Excel as shown in step 13. This is because you are querying PIPE-FLO for a name which no longer exists (because you just renamed it). To get a new list of the names, you'll need to re-import them as you did in steps 4 - 7.
* When importing items from Excel back into PIPE-FLO, you should save the PIPE-FLO system after the import. The system will not prompt you to save the imported data if you close PIPE-FLO.
* There are some additional considerations for our International customers. Please see the Related KB article noted below.
***At Engineered Software, we're always looking for how we can improve our products and services and we'd love to see how your organization is using the X-Link feature in PIPE-FLO. Send us examples of what you can do with X-Link to solutions@eng-software.com and we might highlight you in our next Newsletter!