I am running Win2k, AutoDesk Map 3D 2005 and unable to plot to our HP 1055CM plotter, but everything works fine on our HP 5500. Another user in the office here installed LDT 2005 and is having the same problem. If your plotter is an HP 1055 you may want to think again before upgrading until this issue is resolved. Anyone finding a solution would be greatly appreciated, but for now we're removing 2005 and going back to the previous version.
Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
Unable to Plot to HP 1055CM - Map 3D 2005 2
- Thread starter tman72
- Start date
-
1
- #2
TCARPENTER
Programmer
A little more information would help, can you be more specific: What exactly happens or doesn't happen when you plot?
What sort of error message are you receiving when you plot, or are you having trouble setting up the plotter?
Todd
What sort of error message are you receiving when you plot, or are you having trouble setting up the plotter?
Todd
- Thread starter
- #3
Nothing comes out of the plotter. It appears nothing gets sent to it. No error messages appear. I checked with our CAD guru. This appears to be a common problem for other users that plot with HP1055's. It appears it is an issue that will need a service pack or patch to fix it from what I was just told by our expert. Thanks for the reply though. Are you experiencing this issue?
AutoCAD has a few ways to control printing. You can let the printers Windows drivers (system printers) control it or you can set up the printer through Plotter Manager in AutoCAD. I would suggest using Plotter Manager and controlling the printer and settings from AutoCAD, to get what you exactly want.
TCARPENTER
Programmer
tman,
We use the latest and greatest drivers from hp (I found this to be critical) and then set the plotter up as a regular system printer through the windows printer setup. Once we are sure we are communicating with the plotter via the pc/network, then we set up the plotter through then AutoCAD plotter manager. We had issues at first, but these were due to having incorrect drivers, the 1055CM tolerates only drivers specifically written for it, again, they are available on HP's website.
For grins, you might try connecting the plotter to the back of your pc via a Centronix cable and see if you are able to plot this way, if not, make sure you aren't plotting to a file, or non-existent spooler. If you are successful plotting with the plotter connected directly to your PC, you now know you have a network issue.
Another tool you might find useful from HP is their HP Install Network Printer Wizard (also a free download from HP). The reason I suggest this, is the printer wizard can handle all those tricky port configurations for you - all you have to do is specify an IP Address, or printer name (the wizard can also scan your network for available printers) and then, if you have downloaded the latest drivers, the wizard will ask you to either select from a list of printers your computer knows about, or supply a location of where your setup drivers are located, and it can perform the printer install for you. I found this eliminated a lot of errors when trying to set up a printer/printer port manually.
Hope the helps
Todd
We use the latest and greatest drivers from hp (I found this to be critical) and then set the plotter up as a regular system printer through the windows printer setup. Once we are sure we are communicating with the plotter via the pc/network, then we set up the plotter through then AutoCAD plotter manager. We had issues at first, but these were due to having incorrect drivers, the 1055CM tolerates only drivers specifically written for it, again, they are available on HP's website.
For grins, you might try connecting the plotter to the back of your pc via a Centronix cable and see if you are able to plot this way, if not, make sure you aren't plotting to a file, or non-existent spooler. If you are successful plotting with the plotter connected directly to your PC, you now know you have a network issue.
Another tool you might find useful from HP is their HP Install Network Printer Wizard (also a free download from HP). The reason I suggest this, is the printer wizard can handle all those tricky port configurations for you - all you have to do is specify an IP Address, or printer name (the wizard can also scan your network for available printers) and then, if you have downloaded the latest drivers, the wizard will ask you to either select from a list of printers your computer knows about, or supply a location of where your setup drivers are located, and it can perform the printer install for you. I found this eliminated a lot of errors when trying to set up a printer/printer port manually.
Hope the helps
Todd
tman72 - are you by any chance plotting from Model Space? I recently set up a network for LDT & Map 3D - two users were telling me that they can't print from Model Space - that it seemed nothing got sent to the plotter. They can plot fine from Paper Space/Layouts. It's not a big deal for them since they should be plotting from the Layouts anyways, but I was curious to know your situation. I set them up using the latest HP drivers on XP.
Scott
Scott
- Thread starter
- #7
I'm going to go to HP's website and get the latest drivers and start there. All your help is much appreciated. Thank you all. I'll let you know what the result is, but it may be a few days. I have some prints that need to go out pronto, so I'm going to use 2004 since that is working fine, then I'll troubleshoot the 2005 issue and see what I can do with it. Thanks again all of you.
- Thread starter
- #8
Scott & Todd,
Thanks to both of you for your posts. Todd- I downloaded the latest drivers from HP's site and installed them, but to no avail. Scott- I tried your scenario of plotting from layouts and plotting works fine from there, but no luck with plotting from model space. Evidently there is some sort of issue with Autodesk at work here.
Thanks to both of you for your posts. Todd- I downloaded the latest drivers from HP's site and installed them, but to no avail. Scott- I tried your scenario of plotting from layouts and plotting works fine from there, but no luck with plotting from model space. Evidently there is some sort of issue with Autodesk at work here.
- Thread starter
- #10
Plot preview shows exactly what I want to print. Selecting plot from the shortcut menu while viewing the preview or from the main plot dialog doesn't work either. Niether does using the command line -plot command and going through the prompts. All drivers are the most current. Test print through windows works fine, other applications can print to the plotter, but 2005 is unable to do so. It's frustrating.
- Thread starter
- #12
I've used both pc3 plotter configurations and windows system printers through plotting in AutoCAD and get the same result. It's strange because if I go into a layout plotting works to our 1055, but from model space nothing will plot to it. We also have a 5500 and everything works fine with that. It's very strange.
-
1
- #13
- Thread starter
- #14
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Question
- Locked
- Question
- Locked
- Question