Oce TDS 400

[tjk0225]

We are on the verge of replacing our Xerox plotter with an Oce TDS 400. From what I can get out of the sales rep and the service tech, plotting from Revit should be easy. However, they don't know of anyone in the area that is using Revit with that plotter. Does anyone have experience with Oce plotters and Revit? What is your opinion? We also looked at a KIP 6054STF. Although the decision has not been finalized, some of the people involved have had bad experiences with KIP equipment so we are leaning heavily toward the Oce.

[ArchMiro]

To be honest, I've had bad luck with Oce' and they really stick it to you when it comes to servicing the plotter too.
Personally, I prefer the KIP plotters....

[sbrown]

Oce and Revit(or windows based programs, ie photoshop/adobe pdf) dont mix well in my experience. I've printed to 9400's,9600' and 9800's and all have issues. the newer machines print very light so you have to bump up your lineweights and if you ever want to print to an HP inkjet and a Oce you will need two sep. lineweights(which aren't easily transferable). Not to mention elevations and 3d sheets or any file that generates large plot files has the chance of loosing data. Now if you create .plt files first then send those you can get good results, it just stinks having the 2 step process.

[tjk0225]

Has enyone actually used this (newer) Oce plotter with either Revit or AutoCAD? From what I saw at the demo's from (2) different dealers, it is a major improvement from our 7+ year old xerox. For basic plotting, install the window drivers and plot.

[Steve_Stafford]

We have one, I've had great success plotting to it...but then two days later get blank pages. Haven't sorted that out yet...but it will likely boil down to drivers and settings...not much help but when it did plot it was very nice. I'm waiting for an opportunity to get back over there to sort it out.

[stephen.bromilow]

We have had a TDS 400 for a year or so as a replacement for our 9400.
At first printing with Revit was a bit of a headache. No matter what size of paper was specified it always printed at A0.

We have since had the firmware upgraded which allowed the installation of the windows printer driver as opposed to the older windows raster driver which was required to print from windows programmes.

It now prints great, lines are crisp and fine. We occasionally get blank pages or black pages from the machine but this is down to Autocad as often as Revit. Lines are not quite as fine as HP inkjet plotters and gray scales are not as consistent. But as a quick workhorse to output construction drawings it works very well.

Stephen