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Print Postscript Only NOT available on intel macs?


rbwaia

Question

We have been fighting a printing problem here for weeks. Quick summary is... all Macs running 10.4.8 or 10.v.9 all running vw 12.5.1

color elevation drawing prints fine from PPC macs but a hatch used for showing shadows prints almost black from intel macs but very nice thin lines from PPC macs.

After much testing (print settings, quartz imaging settings, verifying hp drivers for 1055cm)and lots of wasted paper, we have noticed that we can get all settings in print dialogus to match... BUT the PRINT POSTSCRIPT ONLY option is NEVER available on the intels running 12.5.1 (we do not have this options checked on the ppc machines... just notice the bug in 12.5.1 that we could not check it even if we wanted to)

strangely enough... if we save as back to vw11 and print from the same intel based macs... that option is available (still unchecked) and the drawing prints fine.

KATY... help please!

if you want to contact me... I have pdfs, picts, scans and drawings I can send if necessary... but I suspect you can replicate w/out my files

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We typically have Quartz Img. off as it more that triples plot times even for simple files. I will send you screen shots if you like... but w/ Quartz Img. off... the "vectorworks" portion of the print settings looks exactly like the v11 version AND exactly like v12.5.1 PPC EXCEPT that option is grayed out...so...

that seemed to confirm the issue we were having... exact same file on same network printed fine from multiple PPC macs and did not print properly from multiple INTEL macs.

Let me know if you would like some screen shots to help explain what I am talking about.

I can also send scans of the output so you can see the drastic difference

thanks

rbw

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Quartz imaging is a smoothing technology allowing round pens to display and print. This provides are more accurate and clean looking print. Without quartz, the pen prints as square so lines other than horizontal and vertical print a little thicker and often jagged.

It does produce a larger file, but that is the law of accuracy - more accuracy, more detail, more to print, larger print files.

I'm a little confused by the post. Are you saying when quartz imaging is off on the Intel macs, the option is still grayed out?

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Katie,

I can confirm that on our Intel machines if you turn Quartz Imaging off the Postscript Only option is grayed out in 12.5.1 OS 10.4.9 combination. I was about to reply to this thread when I tested it on my machine, and found out that it was unavailable. I remember at least in 12 and 12.0.1 having the option, and it seems to me that 12.5.0 had it available, though we are more and more leaving Quartz on for printing, so I do not know whether it was a VW upgrade alone, or an OS upgrade or a combination of the two.

RBW, a ray of hope is that the extreme slowness with quartz on is in my testing HP Postscript drivers only. We have an Oce, Ricoh, 2 HP laserjets and a Designjet 800PS in our office. On the Ricoh and Oce the prints with Quartz on come out just as fast as with it off. We do this because we get layer opacity and most important we get a much more consistent lineweight between horizontal/vertical and diagonal lines. However we have to play it different when printing to the HP's. One is to print with Quartz off. But usually I export a pdf and then print out of acrobat. I did this on Thursday morning, when one of my colleagues came to me after having a relatively simple print that had been processing in the print queue for nearly an hour and a half. I was able to take the same file export it to pdf and print it in less than ten minutes (I wasn't paying entire attention so can't give a more accurate measurement than that) but given the speed of the old 800 well within normal print times. This gives us the quality of the Quartz imaging and the speed of having it off.

I am currently evaluating different hp print drivers to see if any newer or 3rd party drivers will allow us to print directly out of VW

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Katie... Let me see if I can clarify a few things...

1. our setup is 2 HP1055cm plotters printing from Mac configs noted above (intels and ppc w/ latest os and latest VW)

2. our current problem is a file where the only way we get output to match the screen (nice thin lines on a hatch used to indicate a showdow on elevation) is to print FROM A PPC machine directly to the HP

if we try to print w/ the exact same settings from INTEL to plotter... the colors are slightly different and the line wt of the hatch is substantially darker (like pen thicknesses are trippled?)

3. we tested numerous options before coming to the conclusion that it was intel vs ppc (seemed too easy of an answer to begin with)

4. we DO NOT have the postscript option "checked" in plotting from either PPC or INTEL... just thought that was an indicator that the same version of VW on INTEL had some printing issues

5. we ONLY turn on quartz img. when we have to plot layer transpaencies as it does seem to tripple plot times (20min plot becomes an hour or more)

6. of note? (or not?)... if we print to pdf (using the HP1055 drivers and the save as PDF builtin to the OS) and then use acrobat or preview to plot to the HP1055...ALL prints (even from the PPC's) will have the extra thick hatch pattern. (even though the pdf looks fine on screen)

I can scan the output and send you those images if it will help.

Also... thanks to ionw for your comments... it first seemed to us it was simply and hp driver issue for intel... but when we noted the difference in the print settings and we thought otherwise.. maybe it is a combination of both as we have noted in the past the pdf's made from VW with the HP drivers seemed to "plot thicker" pen weights.

Please let us know if you find different results w/ different drivers as we would like to use the quartz imaging more often.. but the plot times too cumbersome to make it worth the time.

Thanks

rbw

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rbw,

It is specifically the speed issue with the HP drivers. I failed to mention in my last post that Quartz does beef up some lineweights and also seems to add "bolding" to certain fonts. We went through our lineweight standards and adjusted for thickness. i.e. what was being drawn at .7mm is now .5mm, and where our thinnest line previously was .1 it is now .03.

The benefit is now we are getting much more consistent prints, and out lineweights are reading the same whether they are horizontal, vertical or diagonal. Also a benefit is that we are able to use layer opacity to control the grays in a drawing.

HTH,

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ionw (and Katie)

We are finally testing today. Plotting directly from VW to plotters and printers (multiple drivers) and then also making pdf's from multiple drivers and printing via preview to the actual printers.

We will keep you posted.

Again, I still think there is a CODE problem w/ VW 12.5 as the "postscript only" option is not available when Quartz is turned off.

Sounds like we need to get another driver other than HP.. make our pdf's with that... then send the pdf's to the HP's w/ Preview?

.... the saga continues...

rbw

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