spooling dialogue box

[bart1]

I am using autocad 2002.I plot to a network plotter hp800 or hp750.When I plot the spooling box shows up and then it takes a long time to plot.Can I turn this off? What is happening when it is spooling?
Thanks
Bart1

 

[borgunit]

I do not think that you can turn this dialog off. I have looked for a way but I have not found it yet. As for what it is doing, AutoCAD is turning your vector drawing into a raster image by redefining the dwg to a format the printer can understand. i.e. It will take a line drawn at 10.0,12.5 to 10.0,25.5 and change it to a line on a 11"x17" paper, it will be black, its width is .05mm, it is drawn 1" over, 1.12" up to 1" over, 2.37" up (this is the general idea). I think AutoCAD basically does not want you trying to enter another command while it is doing these calculations.

 

[SEMott]

I agree with Borgunit in that Acad doesn't want you to do anything until it finishes all the calculations for plotting. When I switch to Acad 2002 I had the same problem with the S L O W plotter. It would take a map composed of 2-40meg images 20 minutes to send to the plotter then another 20 minutes to plot on an HP755CM. I forgot to mention that when we upgraded to Acad 2002 that we also moved from WinNT to WinXP. Once we got the latest driver from HP the plot mentioned above would take 2 minutes to spool and 15 to plot. The difference was my plotfile size went from 400 meg to 50 meg. We recently upgraded to a HP1055 (I think) and that same plot takes 5 minutes.

Stephen E. Motichek
Project Consulting Services, Inc.