Plotting

Hi all

I have a small issue. I can only plot a drawing if its saved to a flash drive, opened from there then plotted.

If I try plot direct from my PC it closes the plot window when I click plot and then tells me the plot was done successfully but it just didnt plot.

Its been the case since I started work here 3 months ago and Ive never addressed the issue but decided it needs to be sorted out.

Any ideas why this could be?

Thanks

Rob

Is it pointing to the correct plotter? Check with your IT admin as it might be that the drawings on the flash drive have different page setup? Assuming they're different drawings?

No all I do is save the drawing to flash before plotting. Its the same drawing, just a different source.

I only use 1 plotter.

Its not a once off incident, it happens every single time. Now I just save directly to the flash drive when I need to plot and do it from there

You always save to the flash drive and then plot from there? Seems a bit unorthodox. Who set the system up that way and why? The company doesn't want you to save their drawings to your hard drive? Have you spoken to anyone in IT?

How much room is available on the flash drive you're using at the moment?

REMARK Its not standard procedure. Its a problem we having. It wasnt intentionally done this way. Im hoping its a setting somewhere that someone mistakenly changed that I can fix.

I have no IT dept, we are a small engineering office.

Its a 1Gig Flash drive but it matters not which I use.

My boss is as frustrated with this problem as I am.

Can you plot from other programs ok like Word/ Excel?

It's certainly not a problem I've encountered before. Most interesting. What other steps have been taken to troubleshoot the problem that you may not have mentioned?

Are you ploting to file (flash drive)? Then this would be understandable. The drawings are a plot file that can be ploted from other workstations. This can be changed in the page setup manager by assigning a new target for the file. I would make a new file folder named "Print file Dwg". Open the Drawing from the flash drive, and "save as" with the new folder as the target.

Then try to plot from that location.

I had something similar to this a few years ago. The fault lies within Windows at that time.

Within Windows set up is the printer selection. I had to make sure the plotter was the DEFAULT and not the common old Deskjet. Otherwise it would click over my drawing to the little DJ and due to differences in Limits etc. it would essentially plot nothing. But paper came out without on mark from some DJ within the building. (Usually the secretary's for she ran so many sheets of paper, and knew how to change the default.)

See if that changes anything for you then. As did not make a difference as to what I selected as plotting to, her work overrode my efforts in the few seconds it took me to get set up and ready. We did not run a whole bunch of plots each day.

Wm.

Hi guys

I apologise for the late response, I just have not had the time to work through everyones suggestions, until now. And guess what, Coosbaylumber you were spot on. All it took was for me to set the plotter as the default printer in Windows and voila!

This error never interfered with my DJ printer that was set to default the way yours did, the only symptom I had was that it simply didnt do anything after I clicked PLOT.

So after all of that, my rather unique problem has a simple solution.

Thanks everyone

Thank you for the update. Glad to hear you got your problem solved. Some times it is the most obvious explanation that eludes us.

Hi guys

 

I apologise for the late response, I just have not had the time to work through everyones suggestions, until now. And guess what, Coosbaylumber you were spot on. All it took was for me to set the plotter as the default printer in Windows and voila!

This error never interfered with my DJ printer that was set to default the way yours did, the only symptom I had was that it simply didnt do anything after I clicked PLOT.

 

So after all of that, my rather unique problem has a simple solution.

 

Thanks everyone

In lower rh corner the plotter symbol would light up for about five second, then the common DJ that I had at the time would give out a clunk, then nothing...

Took forever to plot anything. Found also in between time I said OK, the default would turn drawing 90 degrees, so that I would only get one line then nothing else.

Once set as plotter being default, everything that got altered stayed set.

Then once the plot was done, had to remember to re-set the default.

Wm.

Ok now the problem is back but in another form. I now get one of the dreaded "Windows encountered a problem" errors. It says Printer driver for HP Designjet printers in Windows NT has encountered a problem and needed to close.

Man this is annoying. Any ideas?

Its odd because it plotted fine the first time I changed my default plotter but after restarting it back with this error.

And yes my plotter is still set to default.

Back when, had similar problem in using a too old pen plotter. I installed M-S MEMMAKER from Win 95 and it pretty well reconfigured my old versus new plot files, and then could do a whole drawing w/o problems.

See similar posting within yet another forum here today.

Wm.