Topic Title

Every once and awhile our plots are missing data (lines, text, etc.). It seems to be happening more and more often. Our plotter is older than dirt (11 years or so), but it has 8mb worth of memory and the drawings are nowhere near that big. Does anyone else experience this or know of something I can do, short of rolling the plotter out into traffic?


-Redd

I don't think the memory in your printer is directly equated to the size of the DataCad file, so it could still be a problem.
If the printer has some proprietory memory, it is not likely to be worth upgrading. If it uses standard SIMMS you should be able to get some memory for free out of a wreck or something. ghe printer may have a self-diagnostic that tells you how much memory it has installed. If it has this and an empty soicket, then anything that fits may give a result and you can see what's going on too.

Hello Redd,

Have you tried to create PDF files from your drawing sheets ?

Perhaps you can figure out what is making the cause or lacks to print.

Hope this helps,
Miguel

Redd,
If you think it might be a memory problem, change your printer settings from "spool in printer" to "spool in computer". This will however slow down your printing, but it will solve those memory problems and all lines should appear.

Redd,
If you think it might be a memory problem, change your printer settings from "spool in printer" to "spool in computer". This will however slow down your printing, but it will solve those memory problems and all lines should appear.

I tried that several months ago with the same results. Remember this is something that only happens every so often and the file size does not matter. It being a random occurrence is what makes this so frustrating. I will try something different and it will seem to work fine for awhile and then it will screw up or it will just happen 2 or 3 times in a row no matter what I do.
Miguel, I tried PDF as well and it seemed to take more than twice as long for the plotter to start plotting (20-30 min.) as compared to just plotting it from DCAD. The time is more important to me when it’s something that only happens every so often.
Thanks for the advice guys. I guess I’ll just live with it and glance back at the plot as its printing to make sure it’s not messing up. If 48” plotters didn’t cost so much we would probably just buy a new one. Also, we just spent over $5,000 in new PCs and licenses.



-Redd

Redd,
Why do you use a 48" wide plotter? We have an HP 1050c which uses up to a 36" wide roll and we print everything. We print to 18x24 (Arch C), 24x36 (Arch D), 36x48 (Arch E) and 30x42 (Arch E1) all by switch the roll size. We have found that anything larger than 24x36 is too bulky for construction documents.
But, back to your problem. Have you tried updating your printer drivers? You might want to try downloading the most recent drivers for your plotter. Sometime, depending on how old your plotter is, the old drivers don't work on new operating systems. I am assuming you updated your Operating System when you updated your computers.

Why do you use a 48" wide plotter?

It is a 36” ,not a 48” plotter. Sorry, brain fart.

But, back to your problem. Have you tried updating your printer drivers? You might want to try downloading the most recent drivers for your plotter. Sometime, depending on how old your plotter is, the old drivers don't work on new operating systems. I am assuming you updated your Operating System when you updated your computers.

Yes, I tried this too and the newest drivers for it were already installed. The thing is 11 years old and nobody, HP included, even bothers to make new parts for it, much less drivers.


-Redd

With the plotter being as old as it is, I would first suspect the cable, as suggested in another thread here, and if it's not the cable, then the electronics in the plotter are getting flakey and it's time for a replacement.

One positive thing about if you end up getting a new plotter, if yours is now 11 years old, whatever you end up getting has to be a whole lot faster and should save everyone who uses it time, and we all know what time is right? The continuum of experience in which events pass from the future through the present to the past. (ie; money)