Plotting Issues... problems...

[AJGKennedy]

I am thinking this may be a driver thing, although the plotter works fine for all our other applications... and I was asked to ask... to see if anyone might have any clues that might point us done the path to fix this...

We have an Oce TDS300 plotter... when we plot directly to it from Revit we have the following problem... (Driver Oce WPD 1.9 build 5.05.16.1)

on a 36x48 sheet on the last 12" of the sheet the information starts to get dropped off... starting with the title block... the whole title block from that point one is gone... then parts of the view information starts to disappear.. to nothing...

We have resorted to printing to PDFs then printing the PDF to the OCE... this works... but adds an extra step to our printing steps...

So I am wondering if anyone else has seen this type of problem... if so... have they found a solution?

[Andre Carvalho]

Humm... Sometimes printing problems in Revit are solved by printing as Raster instead of Vector. You can switch it on the Revit Printing Dialog Box > Setup

Give it a try.

Andre Carvalho

[AJGKennedy]

We did have another problem before that was a resalt from the vector vrs raster... this was happening with all our prints (on all plotters & Printers...)... since then we plot everything in Raster... so that is not it... but was a good thought...

Thanks

[pdickman]

Have you checked landscape and portrait under the properties button next to the printer selection drop-down as well as the settings setup? When you print preview, does it look correct?

[AJGKennedy]

Not the issue... Nice question... but this would not give the effect that we are seeing... with information starting to drop off at the 12" from the end.. not a clean clear cut off that you would get if it were rotated... Not to mention I would have caught that one, not that you would know that... I have seen errors with rotation portrait & landscape settings between drivers and plotter... were there was more then one location controlling it and getting that type of problem... but in those cases it was a clean cut off. and it was usually quick fix... (telling both locations to do the same thing…)

[justin.black]

We ran into a similar problem but it was when plotting PDFs. Little things would go missing. Then we actually had another issue when we sent PDFs to a Print company. We found it to be the drivers. We actually now have upgraded our drivers for the plotter and created another printer (under windows) to send those to. It sends the drawings to same "physical" plotter but just uses different drivers. The issue with the print company turned out to be that their ghost-script was out-of-date! Just take a look and check to see if your plotter drivers are up-to-date!

JB

[pdickman]

We use the OceTDS400 and the driver version we are using is the same as yours. I know we had a really hard time getting this thing set up- cutting off images and stretching in one direction. Our IT guy finally got it set right (usually something we can do ourselves). I am attaching some images of the settings that work. Maybe they will help.

[AJGKennedy]

We use the OceTDS400 and the driver version we are using is the same as yours. I know we had a really hard time getting this thing set up- cutting off images and stretching in one direction. Our IT guy finally got it set right (usually something we can do ourselves). I am attaching some images of the settings that work. Maybe they will help.

Thanks... it was a nice try... but this did not do the trick... I do have our IT guy looking into this.. but he is a bit busy with other stuff... and for some reason this is not high on the list... So I was hoping to figure it out on my own... I usually do... or with outside help (you guys...)

[AJGKennedy]

FOUND IT!

When I was going through that bit from "pdickman" I noticed a couple things...

He had the vector plotting selected... We are plotting Raster on everything as I noted before due to other issues we have seen...

But I also noticed under the driver's settings it had "Mixed data" or "Raster Only"

I thought to myself why not try Raster Only... and it worked... It looks like one of those other issues I mentioned... how the plotter or driver could have settings that match the programs... that if not the same you get mixed results? maybe... or it's just Luck...

It takes a little more time to print then a typical AutoCAD file... but at least they look O.K.

Thanks you everyone for your thoughts...