OK, just got the new HP Designjet T520 24" wide plotter plugged in and she runs just fine. So far, so good. I am running Windows 7 64bit, AutoCAD 2012 w/Carlson 2012. I will use the plotter to print 3 different sheet sizes - 18X24, 22X34, and 24X36. I can get it to rotate the 18X24 sheet so I don't waste paper and have to trim off the excess every time. I understand that I will have to trim the 22X34. The 24X36 should just plot as is. Is there a way that I can set up three different plotter profiles specific to each sheet size? I don't want to have to manually adjust the settings for each plot. Any tips and strategies would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your expertise.
Dale Yawn
I'm not in the office so I don't have the info in front of me, but I plot 18X24 rotated to the landscape so as to not waste paper. I don't think it was that much of an effort. As for 22x34, which appears to be the new engineering standard, I just by 22" paper. The only problem I have with my T520 is printing 11x17 with the sheet feeder.
Everybody has their own way of plotting. I'll share what I like to do. I rarely plot out hard copies of anything. I've worked at five different companies in the last 15 years and only one of those companies even had a plotter. I don't even like sending prints to the copy machine. When I am creating a PDF, I always use Sheet Set Manager, and I always publish using paper space layouts.
I personally like to have layouts for different size sheets already set up in my template file, including their borders. Of course the plotting parameters are also set up and saved for each layout. Doing this means you always have all your sheet sizes at your disposal for every new drawing. If you don't like having extra layouts in your drawings you can always delete unused tabs.
Some people like having different templates for different sheet sizes. If you do that, and find yourself needing a different sheet size, you can import a layout with a needed sheet size from a different template. For example, you start a drawing using your 24x36 template, then find you need to do an 11x17 sheet, you can easily import the layout from your 11x17 template (right click over your layout tab, then select From Template...added tip, does not actually need to be from a template file, you can import layouts from another drawing file).
I like using Sheet Set Manager because I can set up overrides. The company that had a plotter (they actually had 2, one being color), I had overrides for full size monochrome, full size color, half size PDF, and half size to the copy machine. With a single click I could not only publish using the default setup (24x36 to PDF), I could have it override to 24x36 to a plotter, or a color plotter, or to an 11x17 PDF, or even 11x17 to the copier.
One other thing that I remember from my plotting past. The DesignJets used to have a setting where you could have the plotter wait to see if another plot was coming before it would actually start printing. This would come in handy when you needed to plot smaller size sheets on a 36" roll. If you were plotting multiple letter size sheets, it would align them so that paper waste was minimal. I think the setting was some kind of nesting. Been too long so my memory may be failing me. I think once you turned nesting on, you could set your time limit and maybe another option or two.
Gentlemen,
I appreciate your help. Let me chew on this a while, and I'm sure I will have some more questions.
Thanks
