Canon BJ-W 6400 Printer

[PJL 0]

Hello,our office is looking into purchasing a Canon BJ-W 6400 A1 printer. I was wondering whether anybody has used this printer in conjunction with Vectorworks 11.5. If so, please could you let me know if you have experienced any problems? (eg driver compatability).

Thank you in anticipation,

Peter Lee

Architect, Wales UK.

VW Architect 11.5, Windows XP.

[D Wood 1]

I don't know if this will be much help to you, but I have just got an HP Designjet 110Plus nr, and so far I'm very pleased with it.

It will print up to A1 size, either off a roll or cut sheets (I use A1 & A3), and the print quality is a huge improvement on my old A3 Epson. It has ink tanks separate from the print heads, so the cost per print is better.

I am about to get a wireless connection for it as well, so I can do away with the cable across my office floor. This would be brilliant if you want to share a printer with several workstations.

If the cost is comparable, maybe it would be worth your while having a look at an HP.

David W

Auckland, NZ

VWA 11.5.1

17"iMac, 512MB RAM

[PJL 0]

Thank you for the information. We already use a HP Designjet 100 and it has served us quite well until I started looking for a new plotter with roll feed! After 30 months use the logic board (I suspect) is now starting to play up. Our interest in the Canon BJ-W 6400 is its reported colour quality and speed of printing. Also, the inks are fade resistant. We've asked Canon Uk and our CAD dealer whether it works OK with VW 11.5 but they don't know.

Good luck with your wireless connection!

Regards,

Peter Lee

[alanmac 0]

Maybe you need to get the dealer to run a VW file through the printer to see. It's pushing it a bit but I guess if you had a laptop available you could take it along with VW and some work on then you could see if it worked, colour quality and speed could also be valuated.

I know it will depend if you have the time, closeness of location and a dealer keen enough to win your business.

At the moment it does seem that HP are in the lead as regards printer plotters in this middle ground, despite the Mac side being weak on support.

If you are getting a we don't know from both the manufacturer and the dealer for the Canon, but getting plenty of Vectorworks users quoting good results from another make and model I know what I'd be thinking.

If you've had nearly three years of continued daily use out of the Designjet 100 then that's earned its cost, been good value in my opinion even if it does go belly up in the near future.

Good luck

Alan

[ 08-03-2005, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

[Stuart Gray 0]

We have been using a BJW-3000 here in the office for almost two years now without any problems.

Print qulaity is excellent and speed is fairly good too, about 12 minutes for an A0 sheet with lots of coloured lines, hatches etc, average A1 takes about 7 mins.

Set up was reasonable painless our only gripe is that the spooling of the drawings sits on your pc for a while with large files so we have a dedicated PC to use as a Print Server. We thought originally that it was the Printer memory so upgraded to the machines maximum but didnt really help.

Canon didn't have a clue about Vectorworks, strange since they're a US Firm!

[P/L/SQ 0]

Take a look at the HP 130NR. It has roll feed (24" wide) and is network ready. It has 6 color

ink and I spoke with an art director who said that

it was dead on for pantone colors. It does not have the longevity of ink color as it is dye based.

Gary

ggans@charrette.com

[PJL 0]

Thank you all for your input.

Ref. the HP Designjet 100 - our plotter had not been subjected to particularly heavy use in the drawing office, as most of our drawing work in the past has been plotted on A3 printers.

Before purchasing the Designjet 100, we used the OfficeJet 1220 A3 printer, which proved to be extremely reliable, very robust, and is still working satisfactorily five years on. In comparison to the 1220, the durability of our Designjet 100 is most disappointing!

Anyway,our office (me) has decided to try out the Canon BJ-W 6400 - I'll let you know if we have any problems........

Regards,

Peter Lee

PJ Lee Architect | Wales UK

VW Architect & Renderworks 11.5 (Windows XP/2000)

[makn 0]

You could do test print by asking the printer retailer to dowload the vectorworks viewer off the web site (therefore no need to use laptop) and take along a typical drawing file. Try before you buy is a good idea.

[PJL 0]

Our BJ-W 6400 arrived today.

A1 Vectorworks drawing with lots fills and patterns plots in draft mode in about 90 second. Draft resolution quality very good.

So far very impressed.

Regards,

Peter Lee