topic Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work in Installation & update

Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Jere — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 18:09:34 GMT

Help!

I have an HP DesignJet 500 plotter. When I send a plot to the plotter it displays "processing" on the plotter but then nothing happens. In a panic to get a job out I had to publish to PDF then plot from Adobe.

I've been successfully plotting to this plotter for a couple of years now with AutoCAD. Is there a particular driver I must install for it to work with ArchiCAD SE?

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Eduardo Rolon — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 18:48:00 GMT

Did you try printing instead of plotting?
AC plotting is usually for PEN plotters

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Stephen Dolbee — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 19:19:56 GMT

We also had problems trying to plot. Print does the trick, though.

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Djordje — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 14:28:39 GMT

Jere wrote:
Help!

I have an HP DesignJet 500 plotter. When I send a plot to the plotter it displays "processing" on the plotter but then nothing happens. In a panic to get a job out I had to publish to PDF then plot from Adobe.

I've been successfully plotting to this plotter for a couple of years now with AutoCAD. Is there a particular driver I must install for it to work with ArchiCAD SE?

Forget plotting, your pen plotter is long gone.

Print.

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Jere — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 18:44:22 GMT

that worked. That's embarassing, i'm sure I tried that.

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

TomWaltz — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 18:49:56 GMT

Djordje wrote:
Jere wrote:
Forget plotting, your pen plotter is long gone.

Print.

I disagree. I find the quality of the printout is much better with Plot than with Print, at least on the Kip plotters I have been dealing with.

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 19:44:18 GMT

Jere,

Does your 500 have a GL/2 card? You would have had to purchase it seperately. I'm guessing that the reason that you can't plot from ArchiCAD is because your 500 doesn't have this card. Without the GL/2 card your 500 is basically a large format printer instead of a plotter. You WERE able to plot from ACAD because ACAD uses a translator driver to print files from your paperspace and modelspace layouts. ArchiCAD doesn't use a translator with the plot function. So, when you select, PLOT from the file menu from ArchiCAD, it sends GL2 data to the port of the plotter you have selected. This is all well and good if your machine can translate GL2 data, however, like I said, you'd need to have the HPGL/2 accessory card installed for this process to work.

And Tom is correct, plotting and transferring GL2 linear data directly to the machine is more accurate. . .of course you can debate about the differences of print processes, and operating systems. . .but I think that's been done to death allready here. . .

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 21:59:01 GMT

I have a DesignJet 500 and also have had problems recently. I also updated the printer driver which also caused problems.

The solution I found was that you cant print on ArchiCADs "Draft" print setting. The HP only has 3 settings whereas AC has 4 print settings. High, Medium or Low works but not Draft.

The other innovation with the HP driver is that you can now set standard paper sizes. In Australia we use ISO paper sizes but there are settings for other paper sizes including American, ANSI, etc. I found I had to get the printer Paper Standards settings to match exactly the sizes shown in AC for the printer to work. In other words one cant just adjust the sizes of paper in AC anymore. They have to be adjusted in both AC and in the Printer/Properties/Paper Standards for it to work.

I hope this may be of assistance.

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Djordje — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 04:13:03 GMT

Graeme wrote:
In other words one cant just adjust the sizes of paper in AC anymore. They have to be adjusted in both AC and in the Printer/Properties/Paper Standards for it to work.

AFAIK this was always the case?

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 22:54:35 GMT

Hi Djordje,

I used to be able change the paper size in AC and it would automatically change the paper sizes in the printer properties.

But now if the paper standards arent set in the Printer Properties it wont change just from AC Print dialogue box.

I dont remember having the Paper Standards in the old printer setup but they may have been there??? I dont have the old printer driver anymore to verify.

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Anonymous — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 20:52:23 GMT

This is ALWAYS the case with HP printers when you use the PRINT function from ArchiCAD, Djordje. I sweet talked my friend into letting me dump him some T0-PLOT files and he dumped them to a large portion of the designjet line. One of the files was set up using the page sizes from archiCAD, and the other was setup by drilling down into the print properties of the printer driver. With the first setup (just setting page size in Plotmaker) the page size varied greatly (generally, it would print whatever the designjet had setup for it's default page size). However; the second batch worked just fine.

In conclusion. . .Yay HP and Windoze!
On a personal note, I love the HP hardware (printer and designjet line; they should stay the heck away from PCs though. . .), I just can't stand their support. So, if you're a saavy user, and can troubleshoot things on your own, great! Get a designjet! If you aren't too saavy, or can't locate a local reseller that takes care of you, then I'd say look elsewhere.

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Djordje — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 04:28:41 GMT

chad.lawson wrote:
This is ALWAYS the case with HP printers when you use the PRINT function from ArchiCAD, Djordje.

I always set the paper size in the HP driver, and the layout size is preset to match ... never set the paper size in ArchiCAD as I thought that it would not be smart to expect a dumb machine to understand.

Thanks for the confirmation, Chazz!

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:11:37 GMT

I found my old printer driver on my old computer and enclose below the Properties. There is no Paper Standards tab which can be found on the new driver. This driver is from about 2002 and is obviously old. However with the old driver there was no need to set paper sizes in the Printer Properties. The paper sizes would change automatically when changed in Plotmaker or AC.

Re: Plotting to DesignJet 500 doesn't work

Aaron Bourgoin — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:12:59 GMT

I'm trying to troubleshoot a plotter problem for a client. Their HP 500PS doesn't have an HPGL/2 card, and its set up as a shared printer on a Mac network. What this means is that its hard wired to an older iMac via USB.

Can someone explain why this configuration appears to work just fine for all their VectorWorks Print jobs, but absolutely doesn't work for ArchiCAD jobs sent to the printer. I've tried creationg PDFs and printing these as well. This deosn't work either.

Both ArchiCAD and PDF print jobs print different things - but both just give up after the first two or three inches of the roll have passed through.

Is there a fix for this in your estimation, OR, am I forced to consider:

a) HP JetDirect and ethernet to put this machine up on the net
b) HPGL/2 card for ArchiCAD output (any downside for VectorWorks?)
c) insert miracle here
d) all or some of the above.

Many Thanks for any input on this output problem.