Printing to Hardcopy

There are several options for printing large PIPE-FLO systems.  This article applies to version 2009 or earlier PIPE-FLO and Flow of Fluids programs.  It goes without saying that if you have a large spread-out model with fine details like the campus system shown below in Figure 1, printing this system onto a letter sized 8½” x 11” sheet of paper is not going to give you very much detail.


Figure 1:  Large Campus System in PIPE-FLO

If you zoom in on a smaller section of the model as shown in Figure 2, then you can print with much more detail on a letter sized document.


Figure 2:  Zoomed-in section of the Campus System

But this does not help if you want to have the whole model printed.  One of the options available in PIPE-FLO’s Print Report dialog box is “Tiled Printing” of the FLO-Sheet.  Figure 3 highlights the option in the print menu. 


Figure 3:  Print Report dialog box with Tiled Printing section highlighted

With Tiled Printing, you select the number of vertical and horizontal sheets that you want to break the FLO-Sheet up into.  Then the program divides the visible FLO-Sheet into the specified number of sheets and zooms into each section accordingly as shown in Figure 4 below.


Figure 4:  Tiled printout of Campus system

These sheets can then be pieced together to form the entire system.  This is often the best way to print a large system if there is no large format printer or plotter available.  If there is a large format printer available, then all you have to do is select that printer.  Please see the related article “Printing with Windows Vista / Windows 7” near the bottom of this article for details on selecting the correct printer or print driver.


Printing to PDF

If you would rather print to a digital format such as a PDF file, then there are more options available for getting the fine detail of a large system.  The PDF Exchange 3.0 driver that comes with PIPE-FLO has many large format printing sizes available.  It is important to note that if you check the “print to PDF” radio button option in the Print Report dialog box, this will trigger the program to print to a default letter sized PDF document.  With a large model like this campus system, you will lose much of the detail if you do this.  Zooming in on the same portion of the system in the letter sized PDF document will look like Figure 5 below.


Figure 5:  Zoom-in of a distorted letter sized PDF document

Instead, what you should do when printing a large system to PDF is to first change the print driver to PDF Exchange 3.0 as described in the related article “Printing with Windows Vista / Windows 7” near the bottom of this article.  Next, you want to UNCHECK the “print to PDF” radio button in the Print Report dialog box as shown in Figure 6 below.


Figure 6:  Procedure for printing to a large format PDF document

Next, click the Setup button as highlighted above to open the Page Setup dialog box as shown in Figure 7 below.  In the “Size” drop-down list, select a large format print such as B0 (this is the largest available format from the PDF Exchange 3.0 driver).


Figure 7:  Page Setup dialog box

Next click OK to return to the Print Report dialog box and initiate the print job by clicking OK.  You will be asked to save the PDF file.

Now, when you open this PDF file, and zoom in on the same section of the campus system, you will see much finer detail in the printout as shown in Figure 8 below.


Figure 8:  Zoom-in of a detailed B0 sized PDF document