Adjusting gridlines (sight lines) in Primavera P6 can be frustrating if you are trying to print off a scaled-down Gantt chart. If you leave the grid lines as they are then your Gantt chart can become cluttered and unreadable, yet you have to scale it down to fit it on an 11×17 (the legal option on most printers) sheet of paper or smaller. In the page set up of print options, you can only adjust the gridlines in the activity table.
So, can you adjust the gridlines in the Gantt chart in Primavera P6? Yes, you can change the gridlines in P6 and this option is located in the Bars dialog.
Let’s explore the sight lines feature in Primavera P6 so that our Gantt chart is easy to read once printed.
In Figure 1, we have our Gantt chart schedule with no sight lines.
Figure 1
Our Timescale is set to Month /Quarter, but we would like to view our schedule weekly. By right-clicking anywhere on the Gantt chart we select ‘Timescale’ as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
In the ‘Timescale’ box, we select ‘Date Interval’ and from the drop-down menu, we select ‘Week /Day 1’ and ‘Ok’ it, as in Figure 3.
Figure 3
When we review our Gantt chart as in Figure 4, our weekly timescale is displayed.
Figure 4
By right-clicking on the Gantt chart we select ‘Bar Chart Options’ to add some sight lines to our Gantt chart, as in Figure 5.
Figure 5
In the ‘Bar chart Options’ dialog box we select the ‘Sight Lines’ tab. In the ‘Horizontal Lines’ section of the dialog, we make sure that we only check the ‘Show Minor Lines ever’ and we enter 5 in ‘Rows’, as shown below in Figure 6.
Figure 6
In the Lower Section of the ‘Bar Charts Option’, we select the ‘Vertical Lines’. We opt to ‘Show Major Lines every Month’ and ‘Show Minor Lines every Week’ by selecting these items from their respective drop-down menus. When we select ‘OK’ our Gantt chart with weekly minor sight lines and monthly major sight lines are displayed in Figure 7.
Figure 7
To adjust our Gantt chart to display Quarters with corresponding Gridlines, we return to the ‘Timescale’ box and select ‘Year/Quarter’. We then return to the ‘Bar Charts options’ and select the ‘Sight Lines’ tab. We change the ‘Show Major Lines every’ from ‘Month’ to ‘Quarter’ and we change the ‘Show Minor Lines every’ from ‘Week’ to ‘Month’ as displayed in Figure 8.
Figure 8
And when we select ‘OK’ our Gantt chart schedule is displayed below in Figure 9.
Figure 9
Summary
Inserting sight lines into the Gantt chart is a fairly simple process once you know where to look; in the Bars options. Primavera P6 has multiple options for horizontal and vertical sight lines, they can be adjusted alongside your timescale to be incorporated into your schedule. By adjusting your Gantt chart you can print off a schedule that is easy to read.