Slow plotting ACAD 2000i/2002

[bnorris]

I've searched everywhere and can find nothing, so hopefully someone here can help. I am the Sys Admin for the Engineering dept of my company.

I have 1 drafter running Win2k in a group of 7 (the rest running winnt), who's plots take an excessive amount of time (sometimes 10+ mins) and often fail even. No other drafter is having any problems.

Since no one else is having a problem, I have focused on his machine. We tried re-adding the plotter without success. We've re-installed ACAD 2000i, same result. We upgraded him to 2002 (will be upgrading the whole group), no help.

In his command history after plotting we occassionally see "error opening output stream". AutoDesk recommends printing from another app to the same device, and printing a test page to verify a method that works, and then configure autocad for that method. The problem exists no matter what printer/plotter he plots to from within ACAD. He has no problem printing in any other app.

All plotters/printers are served by a machine running NT Server. Plotters and printers to be plotted to are configured on TCP/IP ports. HP JetDirect ports handle printing from non-ACAD apps. The plotters in question are Xerox 8830, and a HP8500 printer.

I am at my wits end. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Intellidrafter]

If the mentioned drafter is using paper space, check to see if he may be the only one who uses a polyline to define his viewport instead of a regular rectangular viewport. If so, then that is probably your problem. I had problems with plotting using the polyline (irregular shaped) viewport which caused it to take 10-15 minutes for the plot to go through verses about 10-15 seconds with a normal viewport.

 

[bnorris]

I don't believe this is the problem. The other drafters can plot the same drawing(s) without the excessive delay.

 

[RiBeneke]

We have found that plotting from AutoCAD under Win2K has been a lot easier to configure than under NT4. In our case it was direct PC to very-old-pen-plotter, not through server. Have you tried connecting and configuring a plotter directly to the Win2K PC for a test. This may narrow the problem.