#HP Draftmaster Plotter
3 messages in this thread
Personally,
almost *ALL* of our plots are on pre-printed sheets and grids (ever sit
through a road profile while the plotter draws the grids?). The main
feature I miss most when we brought in an HP Draftmaster to replace a
Calcomp 1025 is the ability to plot Window (the actual inside printed
border) and go to the plotter and move the origin with a joystick to the
lower left of the pre-printed plot borders. The drawing was always started
at this point and any over-runs simply clipped at the top and right (OK for
us, since the Window frame we plot with exactly corresponds to the
pre-printed borders).
Oh well, now we have to print with a measured origin offset. Works OK until
we have a new grid origin to hit, then its plot a dummy file and manually
measure the origin shift! UGH!
Ken <wish HP worked like Calcomp> Crawford
Ken,
Ugh! I understand. It *should* be much easier to align that window with the
paper.
We can manually set our P1, P2, and axis alignment point on our HPs (7580b,
7585b) to match any preprinted grid but the INitialize instruction in the
AutoCAD plot file header will wipe that out. I've asked Autodesk in a past
wishlist to allow us to set our own header/footers. That would fix this
problem. Does the Draftmaster have the same front panel features?
Most AutoCAD users in this town can not afford their own plotters so they
share the plot services offered by local blue print companies on their
roll-fed plotters. Those of us lucky enough to have plotters on site
usually have them tied to a network and shared by multiple users. The
luxury of being able to tie a machine directly to a plotter for custom plot
alignment is very rare here.
Yes. I agree. I also wish all plotters shared the same origin, controls,
and media… but then they would prolly sue the pants off of each other!
<g>
Dave L.
True, true!
That's the big rub – Acad walks all over the initial setup(s), etc.
I don't have any problem assigning custom linetypes, P1, P2, axis align,
etc., but Acad tromps 'em!
We, too are on a network with our Sparcs, but we still individually send
the plot files after making sure the plotter is idle (everything within
ear-shot).
Oh, well – it seems our life is full of Acad "wouldn't-it-be-great"s!
Ken