All lines/blocks etc on colour 253 are printing out purple!?

Hi everyone, new to the forum and this is my first thread!

Have a slight problem with our new HP Designjet 500 printer which has just replaced our previous HP Designjet 500 printer that went bang a few days ago!

Problem is, all the lines or blocks etc within the drawing that are on colour 253 (a grey i use for certain elements of the drawing) are coming out purple when i print the drawing out!?

Does anyone know what the problem might be?

Thanks, any help would be much appreciated!!

Mike.

My first step would be to check the color table (or style table). If it's only happening with the one color, I'd guess you're using a color table. Is it the same table you used with the old plotter?

Welcome to the forum.

Maybe edit the .pc3 file, go into custom properties and specify that the color to be controlled by the application. If you don't ever print to color maybe change to plot in gray scale instead of color.

If you plot to color sometimes then create a printing shortcut (one of the tabs in the .pc3 file) for B&W and save that to a unique name for B&W, another for color.

Hi, thanks for the quick reply.. I have looked at the colour table and colour 253 shows no signs of a purple selected anywhere? I will have a look again when i get to work tomorrow though to double check, yes it is the same colour table that we used for the old plotter, so strange! i'll have a look at the colour table like i say tomorrow and see if it is all set up correctly for colour 253. Thanks again for your quick response and also for the welcome message, Mike.

@ rkent.. we always print in colour as there are various bits to the drawing in different colours. What is a .pc3 file sorry?.. thanks for your reply! Mike

A .pc3 file is where AutoCad stores all of a particular printer's information, driver, custom properties, paper sizes and so forth. It is the "PRINTER/PLOTTER" you select from the dropdown list on your page layout dialog box. Notice that the names on the list of printers all have .pc3 after them. It is sort of an interface file that allows you to manipulate your printer features through AutoCad.

I have seen this before when plotting light grey solid fill (hatch) but I can't really remember any details of a solution. Some color printers have difficulty with light shades of grey. Maybe you could check the printer setup to see how it wants to handle the difference between color and black & white. Sometimes they do not use any black ink at all to print color images, so they fill in the black dots with everything in the color cartridge. This results in greys having thinly dispersed color rather than thinly dispersed black.

Hi first post on these forums!

We used to have a Designjet 500 & I found that we were getting some odd colours blue looked purple & I think yellow had a green tinge to it. After lots of digging around I found that when you load your paper (you need to check where this is for sure) one of the options & I think it was where you choose the paper type, at the very bottom of the list you could use "enhanced colours" select that, then that gives you your choice of paper & your normal choices.

As long as I chose that all the colours were as they should be. Hope it works for you :wink:

Where are you seeing this option for "enhanced colors" again? Can you post a screenshot?

Unfortunatly we no longer have this plotter so am doing it from memory!

When you load the plotter with paper you have to choose what type of paper, if you go to the bottom of that list I think enhanced colours is there selecet that then you choose your paper type.

It might have been on your plotter but not on our DJ 500+ (24"). I just had to load a roll of coated paper and I scrolled through the choices twice without finding the option you mentioned. Where else could it have been that you had seen it?

Where are you seeing this option for "enhanced colors" again? Can you post a screenshot?

How would one post a screen shot of a plotter interface?

These settings are on the PLOTTER.

I agree that this sounds like a physical plotter setup problem, considering the only changes were to the actual plotters being swapped out. Really not seeing how this could be a setup problem within AutoCAD.

Did you make sure the print heads, ink and head cleaners were in the appropriate positions?

The point is mute as the OP no longer has the plotter and he is quoting from memory.

A digital photo?

How about a link to HP DESIGNJET 500 MANUALS?

You really got me now.

Hi sorry you can't find it I can only think that we had a slighlty differant model (ours was the 42") but think it was the plus one same as yours.

Something else lurking in the back of my mind (along with a lot of cobwebs ) have you updated your firmware? I do seem to remember at one time we had to as well as updating the driver from HP. That could be a false lead as I have had several new p.c 's at differant times but might be worth looking at?