Generate Plot Command

Generate Plot Command (Output Menu)

Use this command to select, generate and display graphical plots for certain unit operation results. These graphical plots will be displayed by the User-selected plot viewer. This command has no effect on the line-printer plots produced in the output report.

To select and configure a plot viewer, choose "Plot Setup" from the Options menu. The PRO/II Graphical User Interface provides a default internal plot viewer, but also supports the use of Microsoft Excel or "GnuPlot" to display plots.

If you are using the default internal plot viewer, the generated plots can be saved in a file with a .PLT extension. This file can then be opened at a later time by selecting the File/Open command. Dynamic plots are available for Case Study and some Unit Operations.

Currently supported plots include a variety of formats for columns, heat exchangers, heating/cooling curves, and phase envelopes.

Plots can be generated for flowrates, temperature, composition and separation factor profiles for column, and zone analysis for heat exchangers. Plots can also be generated for the stream results of phase envelope calculations. You must specify the plot options in a phase envelope module if you wish to generate plots with this command. See Phase Envelope Plot Options for more details.

Usage

When this command is selected, the Generate Plot Window is displayed, where you can select the desired unit operation whose results is to be plotted. If you select the All Units option, all unit operations (which can be plotted) will be listed in the Units for Selection list box. If you choose the Selected Units option, only the units selected (highlighted) on the flowsheet will be listed.

Note that only heat exchangers with plots selected under Print Options will be listed.

Select the desired unit operation from the list box. The available plots for the selected unit will be listed in the Available Plots list box. For all unit operations except the column you can push the Plot button directly after selecting the desired plot . For most of the column plots, you need to specify more information before the plot can be generated. Push the Options... button after selecting the plot type for the columns.

Additional Information

The "Overview of Temperature and Flowrates" choice for column data will produce three different plot figures in the same screen. The "Temperature and Flowrates" choice will produce a single figure with one x-axis and up to three ordinates corresponding to the three variables to be plotted. For the former choice, you need not enter any more information and can proceed directly to plot the data. For the latter selection, you need to explicitly specify which of the parameters need to be plotted.

Dynamic Plots

Dynamic plots are available for Case study and Unit Operations Results of Column, HX, HXRIG, HCurve, Batch Reactor, Depressurizer and Compressor.

For the above mentioned plots a dock-able Plot window will be seen once you push the PLOT button. All the plots will be aligned inside this Plot window as Tabs.

Dynamic plot will auto-update whenever the simulation is “run”.

Below items are available in right click menu of Dynamic Plots:

Export to Excel – Exports the plot data and plot to excel.
Export to Text – Exports the plot data to tab delimited or comma delimited text format.
Save As – Saves the plot to image of size 1024 X 768.
Print Full Size – Prints the plot in full page, axes range may be different than the screen due to larger size, but the trend is same.
Print Screen Size – Prints plot in actual screen size. If the plot size is bigger than the selected page size, then the plot is fitted into the page maintaining the height to width ratio of the plot.
Show/Hide Labels – Shows/Hides the data labels on the graph.
Help – Shows help related to plots.

Dynamic plots also support Zoom and Move.

Zoom in – Click on the plot area and use mouse wheel down.
Zoom out – Click on the plot area and use mouse wheel up.
Move – When zoomed, click and hold left mouse button and move the mouse to see the trend at different location.

To view/hide the dynamic plots, go to View -> Show Plots

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