Way around printing problems with heavy rendering ? 2

[IJR]

My dear pals

We have limited printer memories(standard design office with no super computers), and we do quite well 98% of the time.

There is this annoying 1% of the time when we have to print architectural drawings that bite around 8MB of memory reported by print manager

I was just wondering how you cut down bytes within autocad for both printer time and disk storage(apart from purging) efficiencies

regs
IJr

 

[shadow]

What printer and or ver of acad

if your using the HP Plotters and printers you can set it up so that you can use the computers memory to process the document instead of the printer/plotter or i also found that plotting to file has sped things up occasionally if you dont know how to send a plt file to a plotter i can tell you how

1 locate the file and path
exam..
c:\plt\myplot.plt

2 with that info get to a dos prompt thru windows its somtimes called command prompt and is usually found in Start>Programs or accessories

3 if you have use dos befor just browse to the location of the file using cd (change dir)

4 after you are in the folder with the plt file this is what you type (copy_Myplot.plt_location of plotter) all underscores represent spaces and location of plotter could be a couple of things
it could be a pport on the local machine like lpt1 or a network address which you can find out by going to network neighborhood and brows around and find who's shareing that plotter/printer usually for networks it goes like so
\\Comp Name\Printer or plotter Shared name

hope this helps if everyone helps everybody the world will be a better place

 

[Rich2001]

Another way is to do a e-plot. This produces a much smaller file and then print it from the web . Use Voloview or Whip.

Rich

 

[IJR]

Shadow

Havent fully read your propos(I will digest it after a couple of minutes. But I use HP 350C plotters and Autocad 2000 Lite


Rich2001
Please go ahead and provide more info on how this stuff can be made e-type.


Both of you thanx for the fast responses

IJR

 

[Rich2001]

IJR

eplot info

DWF removes the nonvisual components of a drawing, such as attributes, properties, and complex object behavior. The format is an electronic plot that is view only, so that no matter how many people access the document, the integrity of the design is preserved. (ACAD website)


To E-PLOT File
Plot
set Plot Device to DWF eplot

A trick, that comes in handy is to set all Lineweights – don’t use the default.


Whip download site if you don’t have it.

http://www3.autodesk.com/adsk/section/0,,163301-123112,00.html

Rich

 

[IJR]

Thanks Rich2001 for introducing me to Whip. It is a whole new world I wasnt aware of its existence.

regs
IJR

 

[IJR]

Shadow:

I understood your mission, and it so turns out that I am a serious "dos" person, so no problem, but being not very familiar with autocad architecture, I have to ask you an additional question, how does one create this "myfile".plt
Do you mean save to file?.I tried to save to file but I noticed that I cant activate this option without selecting printer, what printer would activate this one.

Rich2001:

Plotted a file to e-plot dwf format and could see it. Ran my browser and got the dwf to show is tile on title bar. But the screen was blank. Is it something to do with line weights or what?

Regards
IJr

 

[shadow]

First set up a dummy hp printer
if using 14 get one thats a newer driver
if using 2000(i) get the latest
after that in 14 there is a check box in the plot dialog aclled plot to file (in 2k(i) its on the Plot Device tab bottom right corner) you give the plot file a name (which plotting to file gives it a .PLT extention) and you would need to specify a location i myself created a c:\PLT folder on my hard drive just so that im not browseing arouund too much in dos and then what i had said in the above post just copy to the printer i have found that this has sped up many of printting projects if everyone helps everybody the world will be a better place

 

[IJR]

Thanks

SHADOW AND RICH2001

You spent your 3 days telling me how to quicken things up and thanks.

For others who will be interested:

Both Shadow and Rich2001 based tips work pretty fine and those who have never before configured their Plotter manager to include Postscript Level and DWF drivers, I suggest they do so too. DWF idea is great, couldnt believe I could see a drawing in Internet Explorer with layers to turn on and off. The "whip" is great. I also added a JPEG driver in the plotter manager and could save the whole dwg into a jpeg and view it even in Winword. Well compressed. The whole playing-around took less than 6 hours total distibuted among coffee breaks.Thanks Rich2001

And as Shadow implied: Printing is simply a copy-file-to-a-driver process and your driver can be anything from plotter to a JPEG driver. Additional thanks Shadow

IJR