rcarch

you got it jimbo!

if you are printing to an 800PS, then you do want it in postscipt. the PS suffix means that the plotter has a builtin hardware RIP that is much faster than macplot rasters software rip. what kinds of problems are you having? make sure that you have it setup properly in OSX PrintCenter with the 800PS driver. Set it up using Appletalk or the IP address. We use one and have very few problems on the printer side.

katie- there is no consistency to this at all. i created a file from scratch yesterday w/ the setup assistant and could not print it, did the same exact thing 1 hour later, creating the exact same file and it printed with no problem. if i did not trash those to files, i will email them to you. maybe the engineers can peek inside and see if there is anything different.

Katie- First off, which email should i send it to? I am sending the files to hp in boise for their review also. This just keeps getting more and more confusing. I have been using one particular file that i know i get consistent errors with. I took the file (which is the one I am going to email) and loaded at my friend's office who also has an 800PS. On one computer it did not print, on the other computer it did with no problems. I brought it back to my office, tried it from my main computer and it still did not print, then loaded it on my Pbook and it printed just fine. Then tried it on a third computer in my office, the one where the problems first started several weeks ago, and that one did not print. As far as I know, all the computers that I have tried on have the exact same settings, software versions and OS's. The only consistency is the inconsistency. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

just updated to OSX 10.2.4, and no changes to the affected files, unfortunately. tried in both VW953 and 10.0.1 and got the same results.

just when i thought i was out the damned thing pulled me back in - and this time i have even got the hp guys stumped. katie - the solution of deleting the preset standard sheets that hp is saying is the answer is not a true answer, since we do not and have never used any custom presets in print center. i am sending a problem file to hp to look at, but i think this is def a combined issue btwn nna and hp and a little bit of apple. i even have the problem in vx 10.0.1! c'est la vie!

thanks ion - i will gives these a try and see what happens. i worked on it a bit this past weekend and found that it is a problem on one machine only and only in one direction, so i think i will be able to figure it out at some point and the note about the cables helps. thanks again.

we have just put a new machine on in the server position, a dual 1 gig G4. so far trying to save existing files back across the network has been very slow, taking an average of 5 minutes, no matter what the file size is. also, we have not been able to save a brand new file back to it from the client machines. i think there may be something with the permissions settings that causes this, but have not been able to pin point it yet. if you are using jaguar, how do you have it set up, regarding user accounts and the like. we have a separate user set up for our project files, so that everyone logs into that account. i think this may be paart of the problem. any feedback would be appreciated.

actually i am not against a central server - quite to the contrary - i like them very much. currently we have 4 machines running on the network, but we do not use Xserve and that is part of why i am asking the question. we use one of the G4's as the file server, but we are not using OSX server for the server, just plain old jaguar. i have found that there are some difficulties in doing this that i have not been able to rectify yet.

On a loosely related topic - how do other architects out there using VW serve up files? Especially those using Mac OSX? We are set up with several computers in the office, but so far, I am not too happy with the way files are served from a central computer, and am interested in seeing how others are handlingthis issue. Thanks!

Interesting thing for me is that we do not use any presets, so that is not an issue here. I think the driver that you are seeing in print center is the one that installs w/ jaguar. when i installed gimp, no other 800PS drivers were put in. Thanks for everyones effort.

ok - here we go: i take a file that is not printing, run it thru gimp print on the 750c driver, sit back read a book and have it print eventually. then i switch over to the 800PS driver thru print center (no gimp print involved), send it to the printer and the darned thing prints now! and it prints every time i ask it to. 2 of the 3 jobs that i was having problems with are now fixed for some reason. maybe gimp print is like a high cholonic and cleans everything out? go figure - would like to know for sure that this is a real fix tho'.

ok- my previous statement about pre 10.2.3 files being run in 10.2.3 is false. i have been able to open a file from november 1, 02 and print it with no problem. i even copied and pasted some stuff in from a problem file and still no issues. everything printed fine thru the normal route.

So far, anything out of GIMP PRINT thru the 750C driver has worked on the 800PS plotter.

quote: Originally posted by Katie: Okay, I have a few tests I need you to try to better help up in determining where the problem occurs. 1. Does anything print before this error occurs? 2. Is there a particular object in the drawing that causes this error? (Try only printing a few objects at a time) Pictwpstops is a filter to convert pict output to PS output in the new CUPS printing architecture of OS10.2. 3. If you have GIMP PRINT, try to see if Gimp Print can produce this same error. Thankfully, the HP 800ps is supported by Gimp Print. If you do not have Gimp Print, it's not too terribly difficult to learn. I managed to figure it out in just a little bit of time. The documentation is pretty good. The website for Gimp Print is http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/ Make sure you use Version 4.2.4. The 4.2.5 version is still a beta version. 1.Not from the effected file. Print Center opens and says opening printer connection, then I will either get the error message or the printer just closes up and nothing is printed. 2.I have not been able to isolate any particular item. One common feature to the 3 problem files is that they all have had images imported at some point in time. 3. Actually, the 800PS is not supported by GIMP yet, but I can use one of the other plotters (I chose the 750C). Gimp was able to print the file, but it took a lot long than normal since GIMP does not send it to the machine to get ripped. I noticed another thing, after i ran a problem file thru GIMP, i was able to print it thru the normal print center driver, but i have not been able to replicate that yet with any other file. Man, GIMP PRINT is slow............. Thats everything I have been able to deduce up til now. I am not getting any consistency at this point in errors or successes. Thanks again for you help, Katie. [ 01-20-2003, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: rcarch ]

Wow - Katie thanks for the quick reply on that. I am doing a little investigative work here to see if we can isolate it any further. Will let you know if anything shows up. Thanks again.

Interesting to hear I am not the only one with this problem. I was in the office til 11:30 friday night with another machine doing the same thing with a totally different file. Happens that we upgraded it to OSX 10.2.3 on Wednesday of last week! That is now 3 files on 3 different jobs that this happens on. I have other files that run fine. It seems to happen on files that were created before OSX 10.2.3. I am plotting a file right now as i write that i created this morning from scratch and no problems. I would love it if NNA tech could look into this. I really dont want to spend more time reconstructing files from scratch, just so that they can plot. Thanks for everyones help!

actually, i take back some of what i said in my last post, it does seem to reside in VW, at least in the file itself. I can print any other file I want to the plotter, except for these 2 files, which where both from an earlier original, so something has corrupted the file. my question is, what does that error code mean? i have not gotten a response from HP yet, and Apple says that it seems to be something in postscript. i can deal with this, but hope it does not happen again, since i need to re-create the entire job file, then try cutting and pasting things back into, and hope that does not corrupt the file.

i definitely agree it is not in VW that the problem occurs, but it does affect VW, since I can no longer plot from these files to my plotter at this point. i have not been able to replicate the problem, and am still not exactly sure where it came from. i will look at the info on HP's site and see if that is something to use. thanks, katie!

i was trying to plot some drawings today and ran into this beauty: "cant open PSStream for stdoutERROR:pictwpstops-got an error closing PSStream=-50" Plotting to a HP800PS from VW9.5.3 thru Mac OSX 10.2.3 The file was working fine until one of my interns exported some jpeg renderings from RW, and brought them into the file (not sure how they did this, ie: import or cut/paste). this actually occured in two separate files undergoing the same type of work. I have deleted all the raster files, but nothing has changed. Has anyone come across this problem? Thanks in advance. [ 01-11-2003, 03:31 PM: Message edited by: rcarch ]

we just started running 10.2.2 and vw 9.5.3. no problems to report.

thanks for these posts. sketch up seems like a very good product. i just downloaded the demo to try out. how about NNA looking into buying them up and incorporating it into VW? if it can some how be worked up to seemlessly translate all that into working drawings, VW would beat everyone else hands down! katie and matt - how about calling over to germany and see if they would cough up a few euros?

This is all good to hear. My latest issue has been with plotting to our 800PS. I can get one or two into the queue, but any more than that things grind to a halt. So I have to sit at the computer and watch Print Center and make sure there are no more than two queued up. What a pain. My crashing is very similar. I remember back in late MC7 or early VW 8, there was a similar type of crash. They typically occur on the small stuff, like a symbol insert or reposition, or moving and object. It is very frustrating. I am waiting for a bit to go to VW10. It seems to have a lot of nice features, but am a little pessimistic right now. Jaguar works pretty darn good, so Apple should not do anything to screw NNA up, So I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Has anyone found any issues with 953 on OS X 10.2? I have just moved up to 953 and have been getting unexplained quits and really slow printing issues.

we have run into a problem with the room finish library. in os9 we could edit the .txt file with no problem in simple text, but in osX , textedit uses the .rtf format, which vwa wont read. if we do the edit in word and save it as text only, it still does not work. we get varying script errors, the most common being error: _887 _891 - Index outside of array limits. we know what causes this, but are not able to fix it. we like to edit the libraries outside of the program so that we can quickly combine files from varying jobs. does anyone have any suggestions? thanks.