Editing the flowsheet and tables

This page covers the editing tools of the Flowsheet tab (selection, copy and paste, arranging, auto-layout, section frames, the minimap), pasting from a spreadsheet into tables, the stream table views and the first-run tour. The workspace describes the window itself and Keyboard shortcuts lists every key.

Selecting

• Click a procedure to select it. Shift+click or Ctrl+click adds it to the selection or removes it.
• Drag on empty canvas to draw a selection rectangle (marquee). Every procedure it touches is selected; hold Shift or Ctrl to add to the current selection. Esc cancels the rectangle.
• Ctrl+A (Edit ▸ Select all procedures) selects every procedure.

The Settings pane shows the first selected procedure; the toolbar’s Arrange group shows the align commands while more than one is selected.

Panning and zooming

Because dragging the background now selects, pan with Space+drag (hold Space, the pointer becomes a hand) or by dragging with the right or middle mouse button. The mouse wheel zooms; F fits the flowsheet to the window.

Moving

• Drag any selected procedure to move the whole selection together (one undo step). It snaps to the grid; hold Alt to move freely.
• The arrow keys nudge the selection one grid step; Shift+arrow moves four steps.

Copy, cut and paste

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V (also in Edit) copy, cut and paste the selected procedures with the streams between them, while the pointer is over the flowsheet. Pasted procedures and streams get new names and ids; components, mixtures, heat-transfer agents and other resources they use are merged the same way as File ▸ Insert file: identical ones are reused, different ones are kept side by side. The clipboard survives opening another process, so you can copy a section from one model into another. The paste is one undo step.

Align and distribute

Edit ▸ Arrange (and the right-click menu of a multi-selection) has:

Align needs two or more selected procedures, distribute three or more (the outermost two stay where they are and the gaps between the others become equal).

Auto-layout

Edit ▸ Arrange ▸ Auto-layout (left to right) (Ctrl+Shift+L, or ⇶ Layout in the toolbar) arranges the whole flowsheet in layers from left to right in the order material flows: recycle streams run back, procedures of the same section stay together, crossings are minimised, long trains wrap onto a new row and unconnected parts are packed below. Only positions change, never the model or its results, and the whole layout is one undo step.

Dropping a procedure onto a stream

Drop a procedure on a stream (from the Library, by click-to-place, or by dragging an unconnected procedure) to insert it inline: the stream is highlighted while you hover, then split in two and reconnected through the new procedure’s ports.

Section frames

Procedures that belong to a section are drawn inside a labelled, rounded frame.

• Drag the frame’s header to move the whole section.
• Click the chevron in the header (or right-click a procedure ▸ Collapse section) to show the section as one box; click the box to expand it again. View ▸ Collapse all sections and Expand all sections do all of them. Collapsing is a view setting: the model, its streams and results are unchanged.

Minimap

Flowsheets with more than 20 procedures show a minimap in the lower right corner. Click or drag in it to move the view. Turn it off or on with View ▸ Minimap.

Pasting from Excel into tables

Several tables accept ranges copied from a spreadsheet:

• the stream table (Streams tab): feed amounts and temperatures;
• the equipment table (Equipment tab): rated sizes and number of units;
• Material prices (Economics tab): component prices.

Click an editable cell to make it the anchor (it is outlined), then press Ctrl+V. The copied range fills the cells to the right of and below the anchor; cells that cannot be edited are skipped. Values may carry units (2 t, 350 K, 1,250.5 kg) and are converted as in the Settings pane. The whole paste is one undo step. Ctrl+C over a table copies it the other way, as tab-separated text.

Stream table views

The toolbar of the stream table switches what the rows show, without changing the model:

• Basis: per batch, per h (time-averaged over the annual operating hours) or per yr (× batches per year);
• Components: Amounts, Mass fraction or Mole fraction (from the molar masses).

The label column stays fixed while you scroll, and the choice is kept for the session.

Field help in the Settings pane

Numeric fields show their valid range on hover, and fields with a known engineering meaning (for example kLa) show a short definition taken from the equation legends. Calculated values (sizes, units, results) are shown in one “= value” style so you can tell them from inputs.

The first-run tour

The first time FlowState starts it offers a four-step tour: the procedure library (with the Recent group of the procedures you used last at the top), placing a procedure, connecting a stream, and reading the results. Skip it at any step; it is not shown again. Help ▸ Take the tour starts it again at any time.