Substitute to PlotFlow for Mac OS 10.7

[Anonymous]

Anyone knows a substitute to PlotFlow under Mac OS 10.7? It's a very powerful toll that I was used to work with and that I would like to substitute. All my office machines are now with Lion and I loose the chance to run PlotFlow.

[Katalin Takacs]

Dear Lousa,

Mac OS X 10.7 cannot run applications developed for PPC processor (like PlotFlow).
It also results, that PlotFlow is no longer supported in ArchiCAD 15.
See more: http://archicadwiki.com/PlotFlow

[Anonymous]

Katalin wrote:
Dear Lousa,

Mac OS X 10.7 cannot run applications developed for PPC processor (like PlotFlow).
It also results, that PlotFlow is no longer supported in ArchiCAD 15.
See more: http://archicadwiki.com/PlotFlow

Thanks for your replay Katalin. I already know that rosseta is know off. What I would like is to find a replacement for PlotFlow, in order to be able to batch plotting, keeping control of the process.

Best regards

[Rick Thompson]

This is a big issue and complaint for me too, and I am pretty sure GS will not rework Plotflow.

I have not tried this yet as I just received this info, and I am not Terminal savvy:) so, please post if you try this and it works.

>>>>>>

A workaround (unfortunately it is not as user friendly as Plotflow):

You can list the names of installed printers with the following command in Terminal:
lpstat -p -d

You can send the given PLT file to the printer with the following command in Terminal (this command will put your file into printer's queue):
lpr -oraw <filepath> -P <printername>

File should be draganddropped after -oraw. The name of printer should be copypasted from the result of previous command.

You can open your printer's queue in System Preferences/Print & Scan. This is the place where you can pause or delete your actual printing job (I suppose these information you already know).

[Marton Kiss]

I have updated the PlotFlow article on AC wiki with some Automator tricks that might help you: http://archicadwiki.com/PlotFlow

[Rick Thompson]

Marton wrote:
I have updated the PlotFlow article on AC wiki with some Automator tricks that might help you: http://archicadwiki.com/PlotFlow

Whoa Thank you

[Anonymous]

Marton wrote:
I have updated the PlotFlow article on AC wiki with some Automator tricks that might help you: http://archicadwiki.com/PlotFlow

Thanks Marton Kiss. It's a helpful tip. My question regarding the Automator application is if that works with .plt files, i.e., with the plot command?

[Marton Kiss]

Lousa wrote:
Thanks Marton Kiss. It's a helpful tip. My question regarding the Automator application is if that works with .plt files, i.e., with the plot command?

Lousa, unfortunately this only works with file formats that are supported on the operating system level. My recommendation is to use PDF as it contains the paper size, etc. so it is a print/plot ready format.

If you use a program specific file then the associated program will be run and print command will be automatically performed there.

[Anonymous]

While I understand the appeal of hanging on, it's getting past time to give up on HPGL (PLT) and switch to PDF.

Hewlett Packard, the creators of HPGL, stopped including it as standard in their plotters years ago. It will only get harder and harder to keep using it. I expect that at some point large format printers (no longer called plotters) will stop supporting it altogether.

With PDF replacing hard copy in many cases it makes sense to settle on the single standard rather than supporting two parallel file types. I know that PDF doesn't give quite the same crispness and detail for technical drawings as HPGL but the quality of printers these days makes this difference vanishingly small.