Millimetre wave observations of star forming regions in molecular clouds have made it clear that energetic bipolar outflows play a major role in the pre-main sequence evolution of low and high mass stars. An example of this link between outflow and star formation are the observations that a high fraction of infrared objects in the cores of star forming clouds such as Taurus, produce an outflow at some time during the life-time of the star-core system, and that a typical flow lasts for most of the life time of such systems (Myers et al 1987). With the completion of IRAS and CO surveys of several nearby clouds the large scale properties of cloud structure and star formation are becoming much clearer. These studies show that clouds are highly filamentary, and that the cores in which infrared objects are found axe themselves strung out along filaments (Bally et al. 1987, Ungerechts and Thaddeus 1987). Generally speaking, outflows tend to be aligned perpendicular to the flattened filamentary like structures that fill molecular clouds. The association of cores with larger scale structures in molecular clouds may explain the fact that bipolar outflows which are separated by as much as 10–20 pc still have aligned outflow axes (eg Strom and Strom, 1985). Thus, structures probably exist on all scales between cores and large scale filaments and these affect outflow systematics.