LaserJet on a Network
2 messages in this thread
Jamie, Success !!!!! I left a message a couple of days ago re: our laser
jet printing strips of a printer plot spooled to the sha shared network laser
jet.. well seems the problem is the network spooler We send the spooler
program a time out statement that listens for data comming down the
line…when it doesn't hear anything for a specific period of time it assumes
that the application is no longer sending and begins to print to the printer.
That is why I was getting strips of the plot. The vector count would climb
and then start over at zero. In the mean time the time out would elapse and
the whole thing starts over on the next strip.
That brings up a question . . . How does AutoCad build the raster file needed
by the laser jets? Does it build the file in strips as we got from the
output? How come the vector count climbs aand then starts over from zero?
Can ya tell me ? Huh? Huh? Please . . . .
Anyway thanks for your help and advice. -mm-
Mark – In order to produce a printer-plot, AutoCAD must scan the drawing and
rasterize it, converting the vectors into pixels to be sent to the printer.
The pixels are stored in a large memory area (bitmap), the size of which
depends on the resolution of the printer and the paper size. Unfortunately,
AutoCAD does not always find it possible to acquire enough memory to handle
the full page. In such cases, it gets as much memory as it can, and
rasterizes a horizontal strip or "band" of the drawing (as much as will fit).
Then it dumps that out to the printer and starts over on the next band.
Thus, the drawing's vectors may get processed several times, as indicated by
the vector count resetting to zero. We're looking into ways of improving the
memory usage, so that fewer passes will be needed (currently, the
rasterization bitmap is acquired from the I/O page space area, so the
presence of extended/expanded memory actually degrades PRPLOT performance by
cutting down the amount of normal I/O page space that's available. When I've
got a lot of PRPLOTing to do, I set ACADXMEM=NONE and ACADLIMEM=NONE first.)