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ReMark
6th May 2008, 04:48 pm
Plotter: HP Designjet 500 (24") with HPGL/2 add-in card.

Software: AutoCAD 2007

Situation:

A simple 3D cantilevered beam fabrication detail sheet. One layout with the standard top, front, right side and isometric views. The required dimensioning and a smattering of notes are included. Nothing fancy here. No X-refs or dynamic blocks.

Problems:

Despite selecting monochrome plotting the plot preview depicts some of the linework in the details as black and some as green. It evens plots this way! Yep, plots in color even though monochrome was specified.

I'm getting bands of black of varying widths randomly plotted across the images. These bands appear in different locations in the two plots I've done so far. Guess that's why they call them random?

I can plot the drawing by sending it to a Kyocera printer but my paper size is limited to a max of 11x17. I really need the drawing on 24x36. There are no plotting "anomolies" using the Kyocera.

Misc.:

I've purged, used audit and even Wblocked out the drawing to no avail.

I've checked the HP forums re: the DJ500 but no one else appears to have a similar problem.

Yesterday, in a plot of a piping and instrumentation diagram a piece of equipment was mysteriously missing from the plotted drawing despite showing up on screen and during plot preview.

Yes, I am using the latest drivers. Maybe that's my problem. Perhaps I should turn the clock back and reload/use the previous drivers (actually haven't tried that).

Any ideas, suggestions, commensurating appreciated in advance.

Hedgehog
6th May 2008, 04:55 pm
Drivers would have been my 1st suggestion... followed by memory & then printer fault.

Memory... does it happen with less complex plots?... if not it could be losing data with overloaded memory... there may be settings in the printer config that you can play with here to use the pc's internal processing.

Fault... how long ago was the printer serviced. Check the connections... etc.

ReMark
7th May 2008, 11:20 am
After thinking on it overnight I decided to check each viewport to see what Shade Plot was set to. Turned out it was set to 3D Hidden. So I did a global reset to just plain Hidden then ran a plot. Success. Why didn't I see that yesterday?