topic Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed in Documentation

Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 16:03:44 GMT

I just bought a used HP 650c plotter, with no manual. (The price was too good to pass up.)

I'm new to roll feed. My drawings are coming out oriented the wrong way on the sheet.

How do I change plot setup in Plotmaker so that my 24" x 36" (architectural D size) drawings are horizontal on the roll-- thus saving paper and trimming time?

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Richard Morrison — Mon, 01 Dec 2003 00:42:58 GMT

"Plot Setup" has a series of 4 orientation buttons. Just change to the one you need.

You might also want to consider "Printing" rather than "Plotting". It's slower, but maintains the formatting of OLE documents much better.

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Dec 2003 07:19:07 GMT

I tried that. The result was that I got 2 pages, oriented as I wanted them, but with only half of the information on each page- first the left half, then the right half.

Sigh... Printing? I suppose GIMP printing is the only way to go for an OS X user? Just what I need. A new thing to learn. So, tell me. Is it worth the trouble?

I was blown away by the speed of TCP/IP over Serial. Plot files that used to take 15 minutes to go the 6 feet to my plotter now take less than 10 seconds. I can't imagine that printing will be that much slower than the speed of plotting I'd gotten used to.

Where do I find out what I need to know to print with an HP 650c?

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

vfrontiers — Mon, 01 Dec 2003 14:18:49 GMT

Don't bother!.... Plotting is MUCH FASTER and since you're on a Mac, OLE doesn't matter....

Unless Apple and MS have worked things out?

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

__archiben — Mon, 01 Dec 2003 15:04:11 GMT

how to plot A1 landscape on an A0 roll feed and not waste paper. . .

see attached PDF 'how-to' that took much longer to figure out than it seems!

this was worked out for our practice back in the OS9/archiCAD 6.5 days, and for an HP330 plotter, but the principle stands:

in "Plot Setup":
• set the paper size to 'Custom' and set it's X and Y dimensions as X=618mm, Y=817mm. note that X becomes height rather than width, so simply swap these out for your architectural 'D' paper sizes!

• set margins to 'Normal'

• set orientation to print in portrait down the page (second from left)

• recheck/apply to set.

• pat yourself on the back!

by the way: printing/plotting - i can see no discernible difference between the two using the HP330. and with GIMP print there is nothing new to 'learn'. it basically installs a set of drivers on your machine that enables you to print to many more printers than the default set. (it's a bit more complicated than this, but that's all i need to know!). you then set up your printer (Print Centre or Printer Setup Utility depending on OS version and click 'add') and choose Print Setup and Print rather than Plot in archiCAD/plotmaker.

the advantages AFAIC are being able to use the marquee printing function to a print to a plotter . . .

~/archiben
(OLE is still a no go for the mac)

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 02:07:44 GMT

Thanks! I owe you one!

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 02:18:23 GMT

I spoke too soon. It's still not plotting the extreme left side of the drawings. Do I need to change some other setting?

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Djordje — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 05:52:30 GMT

~/archiben wrote:
how to plot A1 landscape on an A0 roll feed and not waste paper. . .

Also in Tips&Tricks at http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=4040#4040

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

__archiben — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 09:37:48 GMT

Todd wrote:

I spoke too soon. It's still not plotting the extreme left side of the drawings. Do I need to change some other setting?

being a metric kind of guy from the UK i have no idea how big architectural D size is, however if it's width is still smaller than 36" it's not going to print to the extremes . . . ?

~/archiben

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 02:23:31 GMT

Oh, come on! You don't remember what 36" is? Didn't you brits invent the system?

(It's less than a meter by about a hand's width)

Anyway, I was only getting about 2/3 of the plot showing up. I have given up on it. I think I'm just going to buy some 24" rolls and be done with it.

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

__archiben — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 09:16:06 GMT

Todd wrote:
Oh, come on! You don't remember what 36" is? Didn't you brits invent the system?

hehehe

i know what 36" is. it's the 'architectural D' bit that got me . . .

~/archiben

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 05:47:13 GMT

I have the same problem with a hp 755cm and a mac. I can't get it to print to the 36". So far I've given up and print on 24" roll paper.
I hope some one on this forum can give us some insight. It is as if the printer doesn't know its 36" wide. My plotter will print out a sample color page in 36" wide roll from the menu on the plotter itself but never from the computer interface. It says it will do it but only 2/3 shows up.. Very frustrating.
My EP machine couldn't find the plotter so I couldn't compare to see it its a osx thing or a AC thing. I also haven't tried printing from photoshop to compare.

Re: Plotting to 36" wide roll feed

Djordje — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:13:32 GMT

Hari wrote:
I have the same problem with a hp 755cm and a mac. I can't get it to print to the 36". So far I've given up and print on 24" roll paper.

How much RAM do you have in the 755cm?