In addition to directly printing a schedule within P6 Professional, you can also use the Primavera P6 Visualizer printing option, its free accompanying program.
The Gantt chart is at the center of scheduling software. The better the Gantt chart plot the more your team members and other stakeholders will understand the project. In P6 professional you have a choice between two different schedule/Gantt chart printouts. Both methods provide a Gantt chart graph with sufficient detail for your stakeholders to understand the true schedule situation.
This article demonstrates how to print a schedule using the Primavera P6 Visualizer printing capabilities.
In Figure 1, we have our Primavera P6 Professional example project schedule.
To commence the graphing process, we choose Tools | Visualizer, Figure 2.
This brings you to the Primavera P6 Visualizer supplemental software, Figure 3.
Click the + icon, Figure 3. Then choose Gantt from the drop-down menu. In the resulting dialog, step 1 ‘select your projects’, drill down in Available Projects till you find your project and use the center arrow to add the schedule to the selected projects, Figure 4.
In the next dialog, Figure 5, step 2 ‘choose your layout’, toggle ‘Create New’ and enter a suitable name.
Then click the Options button, Figure 5. This brings you to a dialog that has several tabs at the top, Figure 6.
In the ‘Chart & Grid’ tab toggle to show ‘Gantt Chart & Grid’. In this dialogue, you can also specify the tabulated data or columns and/or rows to appear next to the Gantt chart. Next choose the Timescale tab, Figure 7.
Here we specify that the Gantt chart Timescale begins at the Project Start minus 2 weeks. The Gantt chart Timescale ends at Project Finish plus 3 weeks, which provides enough room to display the activity labels.
In the Lines tab, Figure 8, we toggle to show the relationship lines on the Gantt chart.
The Lines tab has four additional tabs below. Click the Lines | Connections tab, Figure 9, and toggle to ‘show connection details for all visible activities’.
Depending on your calendar definition in P6, you may have to adjust the time periods in P6 Admin | Admin Preferences, Figure 10.
This is required in situations where you have a ten hour per day calendar workday. For the lag connection details to be correct on the Gantt chart you must set the Hours/Day setting in the Admin Preferences dialog to 10, Figure 11.
If you leave the field at 8, then P6 will consider each eight-hour period for the lag connection to be one day. Thus, if your lag is 10-hours it displays as 1.25-days, and not 1-day which is what you want. For the correct lag connection details on the Gantt chart make sure your calendar and time periods in P6 Admin | Admin Preferences do not conflict with each other.
Continue and choose the Data Date tab, Figure 12, and set the Data Date (or Status Date) thickness to 3.
The schedule plots best when activities are grouped by Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) elements or deliverables. When Group By is set to WBS, P6 then groups the schedule by deliverables and their associated activities. In the Group & Sort tab set the ‘Group By’ to WBS, Figure 13.
Figure 14 displays the Group & Sort tab after grouping by WBS.
As displayed, Figure 14, all levels are grouped by WBS.
In the Filters tab, Figure 15, we expand the standard filters and choose the filter ‘critical’.
The details of the ‘critical’ filter then are displayed below. Choose your filter so your schedule displays only the activities you require. We selected ‘critical’ for demonstration purposes.
In the Page Setup | Page tab choose tabloid or 11” by 17” paper size, which is typical for printing a schedule, Figure 16.
You may have to adjust the Top and Bottom margins to have the schedule fit on the 11” by 17” sheet of paper, Figure 16. In the Page Setup | Title Block tab you can set the header and footer details similar to Microsoft Word, Figure 17.
In the header, Figure 17, we display the date and data date of the project schedule. To insert the Data Date we choose Data Date from the variable list then select ‘Add Variable’, Figure 17. In the footer we choose to show a Bar Legend and a Line Legend. Note that the graphics for these legends is poor quality. You can also include a logo image from a .jpg file, Figure 17.
Finally, click to save the settings and plot the schedule, Figure 18.
Figure 19 displays our schedule just prior to print out.
Only critical activities are displayed, as we filtered the activities through the critical standard filter. Continuing we choose print, Figure 20.
Provided you have Adobe Acrobat or CutePDF Writer installed you can print and/or save a PDF file of the schedule, Figure 21.
A screen shot of our demonstration schedule PDF is displayed in Figure 22.
Summary
When you want to printout your schedule you, again, have a choice between two different ways to graph a P6 schedule. The graphing feature in Primavera P6 Professional provides a nice table alongside a Gantt chart graph. This method is preferred when displaying lots of tabulated data. The activity table is easier to specify and update in P6 Professional than in Visualizer.
However, if you want more high-end graphics for your Gantt chart, then you may prefer the Primavera P6 Visualizer printing option. Again, the printout displays activity data alongside a Gantt chart. Experiment with P6 Visualizer to become more familiar with how to display the tabulated data.