Continued printing problems with VW10 and HP800

[Cameron Murdoch]

As I have mentioned on this list a while ago my company is still struggling to plot reliably with VW10.5.1.

The problem is similar to that which many people have reported: text printing out as black blocks a significant amount of the time. This problem has been present since installing VW10. VW8.5 had no problem with the same setup.

Computers are running Windows 2000 with the latest service packs and patches.

Plotter is a HP800 with a built in JetDirect Card; printing is over the network.

We have the latest plotter firmware: A.02.10

We have the latest printer driver: 5.35

We have tried fiddling with the spooling settings; I have tried turning spoolsmart off; we have tried the rasterizing print option. I think that rasterizing has produced the best results but it isn?t perfect and takes ages to print. With 15 architects trying to plot all the time it isn?t really workable. Recently we upgraded the plotter memory to the maximum but it hasn?t helped.

The amount of time and paper, (and now memory) we have wasted over the last year or two has probably more than doubled the price we paid for VW10!!

Please can somebody fix this.

[ 07-11-2004, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: Cameron Murdoch ]

[Guest]

The black block text printing problem was fixed with driver version 5.35.

Have you double checked that in the properties about the printer, the driver states 5.35?

[Cameron Murdoch]

Katie,

The About box in the driver states:

HP DesignJet Printer Driver

v5.35

Cam

[Guest]

Can you email one of the files that is consistantly printing black blocks instead of text?

[Cameron Murdoch]

It has been happening to most of our files, however, we may have fixed it.

After what you said about the latest driver fixing the problem I tried deleting the exsisting driver, (reporting itself as 5.35) and installed 5.35 from scratch. Having done this I was able to print 3 perfect plots without rasterizing (not normal). Whilst it is too early to be sure it seems that even though the driver was claiming to be 5.35 it may have had bits of the old driver lurking about. I have performed this task on all the architects workstations and will let them stress test it. If we get any black text I will email you those drawings.

Cam

[Guest]

Sounds good.

[Cameron Murdoch]

Katie,

Well it seems that we have not been successful.

Initial reports were good and suggested that the driver fandango described above had fixed the issue.

However, we are still getting regular blacked out text. I will send you one of the offending files asap.

Cam

[PBA]

Hi Katie

We have had this same ongoing problem for a long time. BLACK TEXT BLOCKS ON THE PRINTS- WIn XP PRO, WIN 2K, HP 750 C Plus with driver 4.65, VW 10.5. We have the same driver on all PCs.

We have posted the problem, had discussion, sent files to the tech dept.

There is still no reply and no resolution to the problem.

Other users are continuing to ask the same question for slightly different configurations.

Is this a Vectorworks issue?

Is this a Microsoft OS issue?

Is this an HP Printer Driver issue?

Can your tech people please attend to this very frustrating and non productive issue.

Thankyou

[Guest]

THis is an HP driver issue. They are currently working on additional improvements to the blacked out text issue.

To work around the problem, check mark Print as Raster.

[Alisonen]

We also have the problems of Black texts on VW +Designjet 500 (on W2K, WXP and W98)

We upgrade the driver as you mention (5.35) and the result is always the same... sometimes ok, sometimes black boxes...

I'm very doubtfull that it's a HP problem, since the same driver works correctly with all the other applications (CAD or DPT) we try... and it seems that it was ok before the 8.5

Who will solve that ?...