HP DesignJet T790 - issues!!

[SJE]

Vectorowrks 2013

OSX

HP DesignJet T90 24in

The office is trialling the above printer to replace an HP DJ 800ps. The trial machine is not PS. The drivers are installed on iMacs that range in age and OS and the drivers are the most current for each machine.

The newer machines have no problems or lag in their connection to the driver and printing is almost effortless. However, the older machines; Intel Core Duos and an i5 that are on OSX10.6.8 as well as a Core Duo with OSX 10.10, experience a massive time lag or freeze before they connect to the driver within the Vectorworks Print dialogue. This can be about 2 minutes before driver connection is established and you can proceed to print.

Does anyone have a similar issue or solution?

Also, the T790 driver does not offer page rotation like the 800PS driver did. This is a hassle for the times we have jobs at A2. A2 is not the norm for office paper size but some jobs it is most convenient and we need a plotter that can cope. The driver comes with the clip on "HP Print Preview" in which the page can be rotated, but this is another step in the process and in no way streamlined, and coupled with the driver connection time delay is a real turn off.

The results we are getting from the T790 are excellent for our needs and we would like to get it to work, BUT these 2 issues need to be solved before we commit. ANy users with experience in such issues would be appreciated.

Regards

Steve E.

Edited March 11, 2015 by SJE

[PVA - Admin]

If you export from the machines that are printing slowly to PDF first (Export to PDF, not Print > Save as PDF) do you get the same delay in exporting?

If not, when you try to print those PDFs directly, do you get similar delays before the print starts?

Is this the driver version you have installed on all the machines?

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=5053928&swLangOid=8&swEnvOid=4182

Or were you saying that many of the machines had varying driver versions?

[SJE]

Hi Jim

The machines that have trouble finding the driver experience the issue whether printing from Acrobat PDF, Preview PDF, HP print Preview and Vectorworks.

These machines are all imacs and variously configured as follows. :

1: 2.8GHz Intel Core Duo 4GB OSX 10.6.8 : driver version 27.0

2: 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 8GB OSX 10.6.8 : driver version 27.0

3: 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB OSX 10.6.8 : driver version 27.0

4: 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB : OSX 10.10 ; driver version 30.0

The 2 iMacs that print with no lag in driver connection are:

5: 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 4GB : OSX 10.7.5 : driver version 30.0

6: 3.4GHz Intel Core i7 16GB : OSX 10.8.5 : driver version 30.0

So in summary, the machines default to the driver for their OS number.

However where the 2 newer machines on OSX 10.7.5 and 10.8.5 and driver version 30.0 are OK, the older Intel Core 2 Duo that is on OSX 10.10 driver 30.0 experiences the connection delay.

The drivers are all the PCL 3 raster drivers.

Thanks

Steve

[PVA - Admin]

If you're even getting the delay from PDFs, it would be an issue between the machines and the printer directly, you wont need to change anything within Vectorworks. If you try to update or reinstall the above linked driver on any of the machines that experience lag does the behavior change?

Firmware on the printer is up to the version listed in that above link as well?

[SJE]

Yes the firmware is up to date on the printer and I have reinstalled drivers a number of times. Have also tried to connect the driver via LPD, IPP and Bonjour with same (lack of) response.

Have sent all this off to HP and hoping for some action. However i hoped that another OSX and Vectorworks user must have come across this connection lag before if not the lack of page rotate on the HP T790.

We're trialling a workaround by locally accessing the office server via Screen Sharing and printing from it directly from PDF files.

Steve

[Kevin C]

Seve,

I have a T520 printer which I have set up for wireless access and after an initial fallout with HP (and Mac) I found the solution to the page rotation problem.

My printer is a 24" printer so it takes the 610mm wide roll (perfect for printing out A1's and A2's however the margins which you have to allow the printer to use for rotating the plot for and A2 are pretty useless so the solution is as follows:

A1 sheet - prints as normal - Note the page size is 594 x 841

To set the computer up for A2 -

Step 1 - In VW start a blank drawing (or an existing one - it doesn't matter)

Step 2 - Go to Page setup then select printer setup and in the Page Attributes settings select the printer you're having the problem with and go to manage custom sizes.

Step 3 - Create a custom page size at 594 x 420 (note the 594 goes first) and set the margins at 5mm all round the sheet and select OK.

Step 4 - Store it as "A2 Sheet" or whatever takes your fancy - This will add it to the bottom of the sheet size options. The sheet is now stored permanently in your Mac preferences

In VW Go to your page set up as normal

For the A1 sheet - select Landscape

For the custom A2 sheet - select portrait

Obviously if your machine is an A0 plotter - you will be printing A0 sheets perfectly well, but struggling with A1 sheets - Using the same method as above but using 841 x 594 will create the rotated A1 sheet.

I found that doing it this way allows me to import my title borders, set them as "fit to page" with 5mm margins all round.

This is a Mac problem. The Windows printer driver has an autorotate functions which does t automatically.

Hope this helps.

Kevin