SENDING HPGL FILE

[Dwight]

In my pursuit of a flatbed plotter for fine art plotting on large flat surfaces, they all run from an HPGL file.

How?

When I look at the plotting setup in ArchiCAD and Plotmaker, there's no "SAVE AS" or similar.

What do I do?

The manufacturers talk like there was no problem or special plotter drivers necessary......

I feel like an idiot.

Help!

[Anonymous]

We run plots by creating .PLT files through an HP driver (Set up to print as normal and select File for destination). The .PLT's are an HPGL format. Not sure if this is it or not but thought it might help.

[Dwight]

So you sit around just looking to give insightful answers to problems too, then?

Thank you.

I'll send them one of those and see what happens.

I'm looking at buying a machine made in Sydney, Australia [for me in Vancouver, Canada] so it has to work right, eh?

That's where you need to go to get one for Macintosh, not that I finally might give up and buy a lousy old PC machine merely to drive the plotter..... could be cheaper in the end.

Any comment about that approach?

[Dwight]

Actually had a look at the dialog.

I am unfamiliar with this because I've been using MacPlot from an old machine to drive my existing graphite plotter. Never acrtually needed to save a file before.

That is what you do to send one out to the service bureau, isn't it?

[Anonymous]

A good majority of our printhouses we use accept the PLT format so we have been creating them for quite a while. We used to create them to batch plot to our HP1050 through Plotflow. Now our company has contracted a Oce printer which through a printserver program (Reprodesk) we can view and print the PLTs.
PLTs work similar to a PDF file but not all of our machines have a PDF writer whereas they all (even with the different platforms) can create the PLT.

[Djordje]

tprokop wrote:
PLTs work similar to a PDF file but not all of our machines have a PDF writer whereas they all (even with the different platforms) can create the PLT.

Hm?

Where you have ArchiCAD you also have Amyuni, don't you?

[Jacek]

Dwight wrote:

I am unfamiliar with this because I've been using MacPlot from an old machine to drive my existing graphite plotter. Never acrtually needed to save a file before.

That is what you do to send one out to the service bureau, isn't it?

Wow,
why I never....
Save as PLT file, configure for HP 750 or 1050 compress and send.
Most PC based plotters will work with that configuration (my experience), or if you can, try to cofigure for the specific model that they use. Sometimes sending a PDF file works as well, but I have had some operators ask me; "what is it? We can't print PDF's"

[Dwight]

Thanks.
I'll try that.

[Anonymous]

Djordje wrote:

tprokop wrote:
PLTs work similar to a PDF file but not all of our machines have a PDF writer whereas they all (even with the different platforms) can create the PLT.

Hm?

Where you have ArchiCAD you also have Amyuni, don't you?

Yes, all our Architectural drafters have the Amyuni, but we run a different platform for our engineering. Both platforms can write the PLT's and so far it has worked well for us.