CompuServe Messages

Leif – Let me try to answer your questions about the HP LaserJet printer plotter driver. 1. AutoCAD can't tell how much memory the printer has. Rather than ask an obscure question that will confuse many users, it follows HP's recommended practice of resetting. It also deletes all soft-fonts that have been loaded as "permanent". If you really can't stand this, you can direct the PRPLOT output to a file and strip these command codes from the file before sending it on to the printer. I suppose you could also patch PRHPLJ.DRV to stop it from writing these command codes. 2. Printer resolution is handled as a model-number type of specification in order to reduce the number of prompts you must answer at PRPLOT time, and to enable scripts to run without regard to what printer is configured. If you have need for 150 and 300 dpi on a regular basis, you could avoid reconfiguring by maintaining two configurations as described in Appendix B of the AutoCAD Reference Manual (although this does entail exiting and reentering AutoCAD). Will this work for you? (Comfiguration of multiple plotters and printers, from which you could select one at PLOT/PRPLOT time, is on the wishlist.) 3. Vector-to-raster conversion requires a great deal of memory for the raster bitmap. PRPLOT gets as much memory as it can (from normal I/O paging space) and rasterizes "bands" of the drawing there. The larger the memory area it can get, the fewer passes are needed. Since extended/expanded RAM *reduces* the amount of normal I/O paging space (due to extended page space control tables), setting ACADXMEM and ACADLIMEM to NONE before PRPLOT-ing will minimize the number of passes. (PRPLOT's memory usage is due for a major overhaul in a future release.) .