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Print orientation


Greg_at_ils

Question

Is anyone else having no luck in controlling the drawing orientation on a HP 500PS? No mater what I do every drawing wants to print along the length of the paper. For example a 24x36 drawing on a 36in roll prints the 24in side of the drawing along the width of the paper. There are no driver or on printer settings for this.

I'm stumped.

Greg

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Another option could be to output the drawing to a PDF file and then use Acrobat or Acrobat Reader to plot the PDF file.

You may want to try plotting with "Auto-Rotate and Center" ticked on. If the printer driver works properly in combination with Acrobat it should print in the most economical orientation.

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I'm also using the driver built into Leopard.

I tried Gerrit's method already. I made the custom page size 36x24. But you have to change it to Portrait otherwise the page flips to a Portrait view in VW and the plotter cuts off the sides just as it views in VW. Now if I change it to Portrait, it then looks correct in VW and print in the proper orientation but the plotter does not treat the margins the right way and now cuts off the actual top and bottom of the drawing because it thinks those are the sides of the drawing. It's very odd. If I flip the margin numbers around it looks right in VW but it clips the top and bottom of the drawing as if I never changed the margins. No matter what I do with the margins in VW, the plotter wants to have the "top" and "bottom" be that largest margins.

The only solutions I can find so far is to make the page size 36x25 but then I get a print size that won't match the project set or use the larger margins all around and loose space.

This just may send me over the edge. It should not be this difficult to print.

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I have the same Designjet HP 500PS and the same problem that I solved.

To get exact A0, A1, A2, A3 I have create my custom equivalent formats including the margins that are (for the HP 500PS) 1.7 cm (top and bottom) and 0.5 cm (left and right).

For example A3 Horizontal trimmed is 42x29.7 cm, including margins is 43x33.1 cm.

Doing this way it works.

Another way is to print to PDF and using a simple layout program like this (Mac only):

http://digilander.libero.it/kiaradot/fitplot/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/fitPlot%20help/index.htm

The advantage is that you may print more drawing at once optimizing paper waste and having the margins under control.

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I've been having a terrible time with this, too, but here's how I fixed it to print on C paper:

Go to File>Page Setup, set the number of pages it will print to 1 horizontal, 1 vertical. Then click the Printer Setup button in the lower corner and set to landscape. Click OK and make sure the size button says 24.84? wide by 17.64? high (the actual printable area for C paper, at least on my printer), then print the thing using the standard VW printing command.

I hope that's useful to someone else out there. :)

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Mac OS 10.5.6, VW-2008, I also am having the same orientation problem but using B-Size on TWO different printers. A Sharp AR-164(obsolete but still good), and a XEROX Phaser 5500DT. I have updated drivers done lots of page setup and size tweaking and the image still shows up one way on Print Preview, and prints oriented at 90?.

I am not above thinking it is the Intel CPU, or the Mac OS that is causing the problem but it is very very very frustrating.

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I thought I would update this old post of mine as I have a workaround that has solved this issue for me.

The original problem of the plotter auto flipping the drawing was a result of trying to use an "oversize" or "super" page size. For example, if you select the normal 24"x36" or D size page in your page setup, the VW page size is actually 22"x34" and your plotter margins are added to that. As you go up in page size, this wasted space gets larger. An E size page will have a VW page size of 34"x44". I find that to be a lot of wasted space. The HP 500 is capable of printing with margins of .2 and .67. I personally make my margins .5 and .67 which should be plenty for any other plotter to print my drawings.

The workaround is simple. You need only make a custom page size with the dimensions flipped. If you want a 24"x36" or D size page, you make a custom page size with the dimensions of 36"x24" (width x height). Leave your margins at the default for the plotter or if you change them, make sure the Top and Bottom margins are the larger ones. This tricks the plotter into thinking you are printing in portrait. Your portrait and landscape settings will therefore be reversed.

That's it! This has worked every time for me regardless of the page size I use.

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On 2/28/2011 at 4:32 PM, Doubledge said:

I thought I would update this old post of mine as I have a workaround that has solved this issue for me.

The original problem of the plotter auto flipping the drawing was a result of trying to use an "oversize" or "super" page size. For example, if you select the normal 24"x36" or D size page in your page setup, the VW page size is actually 22"x34" and your plotter margins are added to that. As you go up in page size, this wasted space gets larger. An E size page will have a VW page size of 34"x44". I find that to be a lot of wasted space. The HP 500 is capable of printing with margins of .2 and .67. I personally make my margins .5 and .67 which should be plenty for any other plotter to print my drawings.

The workaround is simple. You need only make a custom page size with the dimensions flipped. If you want a 24"x36" or D size page, you make a custom page size with the dimensions of 36"x24" (width x height). Leave your margins at the default for the plotter or if you change them, make sure the Top and Bottom margins are the larger ones. This tricks the plotter into thinking you are printing in portrait. Your portrait and landscape settings will therefore be reversed.

That's it! This has worked every time for me regardless of the page size I use.

 

7 years later, this tip still works great! Just did this using a DesignJet 510. Thank you Doubleedge!

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