Anybody plotting to Oce?

[jspartz]

We have an Oce TDS600. We also have Repro Desk 4.30.5 that we use to send our plots to the plotter. It seems that on any page where there is filled regions, it shifts everything out of place on the plot. If it's printed to a printer it comes out fine. If I'm planning on sending it to the plotter and preview it, it looks fine. But, somewhere between the creating of the prn or plt and sending it to the plotter it gets messed up. Has anyone else had this problem? Right now, I am using the Oce TDS600 Driver. In AutoCAD I switched it to use the HP 750 driver because there are much less problems with it. I will try troubleshooting more tomorrow, but I would just like to see if anyone knows what may be the problem.

[Andre Baros]

We're plotting to an OCE TDS450 using the TDS450 driver with no problems either with direct print or though Repro Desk. Were using Repro Desk 1.6 because our service bureau mentioned problems with the newer version... the only thing we loose is direct plotting of DWF's and since we're not using them anyway there is no point to upgrading.

[crispin.schurr]

We use an Oce TSD600, and we have no problems other than not being able to print A1 off an A0 roll (sheet rotated sideways).

I Have no idea what firmware etc we are running.
We run two queue types - one using an HPGL driver, the other using Postscript.

We had problems on AutoCAD with our Oce, as we were trying to set margins, and rotation etc, and form some reason the firmware would not just accept them but would insist on overiding them. Haven't had the same problem on Revit, but this interference may be similar to what you are experiencing.

C

[jffgrffn]

Note, my company doesn't use Revit (yet). Despite my best efforts, my employer is (an Autodesk subscription customer) stuck on ADT 3.3, drawing massive luxury homes, one line at a time, but I'll save that topic for another day.

For what it's worth, my office uses a Oce 9600 (TDS600) also. We gave up on .plt files several years ago. I felt that .plt files were a waste of time, since .plt files are machine specific. I learned early on, that the .plt files we were creating would become worthless the moment that our Oce was wheeled out the door and replaced by a different machine.

I couldn't even tell you what Oce Reprodesk looks like, as I have never seen or used it. We create all of our output as .pdf files and send them directly to our Oce (from Adobe Reader) without any issues. I felt that .pdf was a better choice for our office because they can be easily viewed on screen, shared, and plotted by anyone. Our clients love them too. It's not uncommon for us to send these same .pdf files across the country, or to far off places like Japan for review. Future plotting of these archived .pdf files will be a breeze regardless of how long our Oce serves us.

We use Acroplot to create our .pdf files. Each of our drawing sets usually have somewhere between 40-60 pages. Acroplot is an automated solution for this task. Once you've set it up, it's pretty much push a button, take a short break, and come back to find all of your .pdf files waiting. That was never the case when creating .plt files. As someone who used to create .plt files one layout tab at a time, I found that Acroplot paid for itself in a very short time. I'm a very happy Cadzation (Acroplot) customer. I'd recommend their products to anyone. If I have a question, they usually have a solution within a few hours. I couldn't be more impressed.

Hopefully, they will be ready for Revit by the time my company is ready for Revit.

www.cadzation.com

Edit:
I can't believe it's been six years without a single post. Amazing (shakes head).

[The Sweg]

We use Oce TDS400. We plot from DWF's, and don't have any problems.

[jspartz]

I tried PDFs and any images come out pixelated, even on Presentation quality. We use an image for our titleblock. But, it does print correctly if it is a PDF, which is good. Also, if I print directly to the plotter it comes out great. Just the way I would like it to look. So, that means, it's not the PRN file because not everyone has the issue. It's not the plotter driver because it uses that when sending it directly. It's the Repro Desk software. Even when I preview the drawing in Repro Desk it looks wrong before printing it. Maybe I should try an older version of the software, or the new Oce tools, which I tried setting up a year ago and called Tech Support and asked them why it doesn't work because I set everything up according to the help file and the support said "I don't know. We've never gotten it to work." I gave up on that idea.

[sbrown]

We used to print only to .plt file, then thru reprodesk to oce9600. you had to in the preview, shift the first drawing into place, then apply to all others thru reprodesk and they printed great. this was 3 years ago. So i'm not sure how reprodesk has changed.

[brethomp]

We also use Repro Desk 4.30.5 to an OCE9600. But we use PDF files instead of PLT files. To get PDFs to look good you have to change the default Ghostscript Resolution to something like 1200 dpi. (Configure menu, Defaults, PostScript tab).

[jspartz]

Scott, I don't have a problem with the whole image shifting. It's just a couple things here and there inside the image. It's throwing off the vector image.

On the other side, with the raster image, I set my resolution for postscript to 1200 and plotted in and the shades are much less pixelated, but the outside of all the letters are still grainy looking. It opens up and previews great in Acrobat Reader, so it has to be Repro Desk or ghostscript.

I would like to switch everything over to PDF though.

[mcuevas]

We have an OCE TDS 600, currently we plot to pdf files and then use Oce Print Exec LT to plot. Quality is good and haven't had too much trouble with it.

[Simon.Whitbread]

Plotter: TDS600
Software: Print Exec Workgroup 1.4

Plot from Revit and Autocad A1 sheets to A0 roll

Typical prlot procedure:

Revit > Single page PDF > Print exec
Revit > Single page PDF > Multi page PDF > direct to plotter
Autocad > PLT > Print Exec

Past issues:
Autocad - none
Revit - Some font display (always ok after restart). Orientation sorted out early on. This involved (partly) using the image correction tick box. - See image. Although first reaction is " I'm not scaling my prints", because the plot is at full size (A1 841x594), the output doesn't actually get scaled and the paper os from the correct roll.

[brussell]

We plot directly to OceTDS600, but have found best results when using the latest Oce *Postscript* driver. I don't use repro desk, so I am not sure how that fits into the equation, but the PS driver should eliminate your issues.



Brian Russell

Integrated Practice Manager
Ayers|Saint|Gross Architects + Planners

[jspartz]

I've set the resolution on the PDF printer higher and switched the setting in Repro Desk for postscript processing to 1200 dpi and now it comes out completely smooth, how it should. I will be elimanately plt files for good now. And now with PDFs, Repro Desk can't mess anything up in the translation. Thanks!

[Will_Munson]

Dump Ghostscript try AcroPlot Repro. This is NOT the AutoCAD DWG to PDF software. It is a different application built for plotting PDF's.



We had a lot of clients and their reprographers complain that PDF files with "lines merge" enabled would make Ghostscript choke and die. “Lines Merge” is a “must have” if you want your PDF files to plot exactly as they would from AutoCAD. FYI -- All versions of Adobe Acrobat do not support "lines merge" for PDF's created from AutoCAD.



So, we created AcroPlot Repro which will batch convert PDF, DWF, and PLT files to high quality TIFF files for wide-format plotters. The PDF and DWF processing times are significantly less and the plot quality is very good.



Many AEC firms are using it and once a reprographer tries it they usually freak out because they don't have to purchase the postscript option for their plotter--$$$. Adding the postscript upgrade to their plotter controller usually doesn’t solve the speed and quality issues with plotting PDF’s. AcroPlot Repro is a low cost software fix.



It seems a little backwards but firms that want to move away from PLT and over to 100% PDF have a workflow like:



Release DWG --> Convert DWG to PDF (share, view, print, and archive) --> Convert PDF to TIFF for plotting. PDF are rasterized at the time you actually print them, so converting to TIFF is nothing new.



Since Ghostscript is really made for documents 11x17 and smaller, there are memory and speed issues for large format drawings like 24x36 etc...



AcroPlot Repro runs as a standalone application or can be configured to replace Ghostscript in Oce ReproDesk, KIP PrintRequest, and almost any other application that is using Ghostscript.



Here is a link for more information:

http://www.cadzation.com/acroplotrepro.htm (http://www.cadzation.com/acroplotrepro.htm)