Slow HP DesignJet 600 with AutoCAD 2004

eddik

I work with two HP DesignJet 600 A/EO size plotters. The plotters are on different networks in separate offices. Both plotters use 10Base-T JetDirect J2552 cards. Both plotters plot AutoCAD R14 drawings quickly. Upgrading recently to AutoCAD 2004, we found that one plotter takes approximately four times longer than the other to plot the same ACAD 2004 drawing.
Both plotters are using the latest drivers from www.hp.com. The slower plotter is several years newer. The only other difference I have noticed is that the jet direct card on the faster plotter is using an earlier firmware version, (A.03.03) while the slower plotter's jet direct has firmware version A.05.05. Thanks for any suggestions you can provide.

look321

Hi,
You will have to handle this with a scientific approach :-)
Where is the bottleneck? In spooling the print, in the transport over the network or in the printer itself?
Network
One thing you can look at is the TCP/IP port you have installed.
- It should be the "HP standard TCP/IP port", so WITH HP in the name. The Microsoft standard port is slower.
- Then, type the IP adresses of the printers in a browser window and check the network settings of the JetDirect servers, compare them and check for differences.
- Good idea to upgrade the firmware of both JetDirects to the same version.
Still slower? is there simply a lot more traffic on the network to the slower printer?
Printer
- Do you really use exactly the same settings on both printers? In the driver settings as well as in the printer itself?
- Create 2 new PC3 files in AutoCad from scratch and try again.
Just check step by step and change one thing at a time.
Good Luck
Robert

loyalxuan

i experienced slow printing on hp designjet printers also. with win xp pro and acad 2004
before that we used acad 14 so i dont know if it is just acad 2004 or that it also would have been slow on acad 2000, acad 2000i and acad 2002. i guess it would because someone told me that since acad2000 the printing gets done by a windows system, converting mm to pixels first and then from pixels to mm again before sending to the printer.
i dont know if this REALY is the problem of the slo printing.
i think the sending to the plotter takes longer on the slow plotter, because the plotter processes the date to in that case, so it doesnt accept the data from your pc as fast as otherwise. i think this because the option about lines merge/ overlap change, cause the plot to take much longer.
the effective diffenece besides plotting time is that in the fast plot version thin lines wont be thinner then 0.25 mm and the slow version gives the right result. (we use thin lines such as 0.13 mm so we cant use the fast way.
though i think the thick lines should not happen even in the fast plot way, but maybe it was done so, so that people that dont use thin lines dont also have to wait as long as when the plotter processes the plotfile after receiving.
i also tried to install the acad hdi drivers, to send hpgl2 directly to the printer, but that doesnt speen up anything.
i realy think this is a problem hp should work on, or explain their decisions made when they wrote the driver, and explain why they did / what was their problem

ddsdjn

In response to some of you who are still having problems with very SLOW plotting to HP plotters with HPGL2 Cards from AutoCAD 2000 running under Windows 2000 (Win2k)
We had this problem with an HP500 and it drove us mad - yes we tried HP support - AutoCAD Support - and we tried differnt drivers but these all lacked the options we required.
Eventually we found a helpfull boffin at HP who solved the problem for us (its so simple when you know how). This works for both the original shipping driver (as on the installation CD) and the latest version 5.34 - and as its a feature of the driver should it work on XP as well as Win2k.
Follow these instructions EXACTLY
1. From START choose SETTINGS > PRINTERS
2. Right Click and choose PROPERTIES
3. Select PRINTER PREFERENCES (a diog box with the HP Invent logo in blue should appear)
4. Now click on the HP logo - another diog box should appear with the driver revision number and an OK button (to close the diog).
5. Are you ready for this....
6. Hold down the F8 Key on your keyboard and then click on the OK button.
7. This accesses the 'special options' of the printer driver
8. The 'fix' is to uncheck the '16 Enable SpoolSmart' option.
Now you should be able to do fast plots from AutoCAD2000 (note you'll need to do this on every machine that uses the driver - setting it on a printserver seems to make no difference)
Hope this helps...