How to plot in Pro/E on a UNIX box?

[sundevil98]

Can someone enlighten me on how to plot from Pro/E on a UNIX box?

I've been using pro on a PC for about 4 years now and can plot just fine.

Now, I'm working on a UNIX box and I'm not sure how to plot.

I think the problem is with the plotter command:

I know it needs "lp -dPLOTTERNAME".... but, is that all?

We're not having any luck, and I'm the only pro/e "expert" at my place of employment.

 

[sundevil98]

I figure maybe I should elaborate a bit on this so there's no confusion...

I'm working on an A0 sized drawing, and I'm trying to plot directly from Pro/E.

In Pro/E, I select:

"Print" from the "File" menu.

That brings up a dialog box where I select the destination printer: "DESIGNJET750C"

I hit "configure..." and set the size to "A0" on the page tab, and "Full Plot" for the plot option on the "model" tab.

I select the "To Printer" box

I then hit "OK" and I'm taken back to the Print box. I select "All" for sheets, and set the # of Copies to "1".

In the Plotter Command box, I'm not exactly sure what to type. Our UNIX plotter name is set to "PLOTTER"

I've tried "lp -d PLOTTER drawing_file_name.plt"
and "lp -d PLOTTER"
and "lp -dPLOTTER"
and "lp -dPLOTTER drawing_file_name.plt"

But, it's like there's nothing sent to the plotter.

If I create a file then, I can send the file to the plotter via the UNIX prompt with either "lp -dPLOTTER drawing_file_name.plt" or "lp -d PLOTTER drawing_file_name.plt" However, when I do this, the text on the drawing and the dimensions are not very sharp - they are very pixelated and unreadable (even at full scale).

I've tried making generic post script files, but I can only get an 8.5"x11" image of a corner of the drawing (which look as if the text and dimensions are readable).

Any help here is appreciated. In the mean time, I have to transfer all of my files to my PC and start up Pro/E on that to plot (which is a PITA since my PC is VERY slow).

 

[mjcole]

If I remember correctly I always used the lpr UNIX command to print my .plt files from a UNIX box.

This might help, unless you've already tried lpr.

lpr -d PRINTER_NAME proe_drawing_plotfile.plt

Michael

 

[dgallup]

Here are various commands I used to do on my HP-UX box:

lp -dhp5000 -c -onb file_name

I think the -onb suppressed printing a banner page, not sure what the -c did.

lp -s -c -ddesignjet file_name

In this one the -s was silent mode (I think) so that there was no standard output about the file being printed.

I don't have a UNIX system anymore, just have these old scripts left. But I always got very high quality output.

 

[hootman]

First open up a terminal window
type lpstat -a
this will list all printers accepting requests
example
XES0 accepting requests since Nov 17 15:03 2003

config.pro options:
plotter_command lp -dXES0
pen_table_file /RA7000/admin/proe/penmap/table.pnt

I am running Pro/E 2001 on a Sun Ultra 10
Print with no problem
I never specify paper size. The drawqing format dictates paper size. Default scale is 1:1