AutoCAD Architecture

[#1]

Through the last several releases of Acad our company has utilized the page set up manager to create custom printing presets that are in our title block template files.  This has work great until recently, we bought a new plotter and installed the drivers as one would expect.  The page set ups worked as expected on all machines for the first 2 months.  Then for reasons unkown to me they stopped workin on one of our machines.  All of our machines are 32 bit Windows XP machines with ACA 2012 installed.  For the machines that are working correctly, once you click the plot button and the plot dialog box opens we select the custom "page set up" we want to use which then changes all of the settigns so that the page will plot correctly.  On the one machine that is not working correctly the "Name" field reverts immedialty back to "None". It does change the page settings but it does not change them correctly.  Specifically it does not change the page size correclty, it changes it the page size to a size we do not use (OVrsized Arch E1).  I have had a tech from the plotter company come take a look at it and he claims that the driver is installed correctly and that this is an Acad issue.  I have also had  Tech from Cad Technology Center take a look at this issue from the cad side of things and he is telling me that this is a driver issue.  Does anyone out there have experience this type of issue and have a suggestion on how I might fix it?  Thanks for yor help, Todd

[#2]

Need a little bit of info on how your office has things setup on the back end...

Are you using .pc3 files or the windows print drivers?

If using .pc3s, are they individual to each machine, or located on a server that everyone accesses?

Did the machine in question have its ACA 2012 reinstalled or repaired recently?

Have you checked the printer support file paths on the rogue machine to make sure they are correct for your office setup?

~ Mary

[#3]

Mary,

No we are not using .PC3's.  We are using windows drivers which have been installed on each machine individually.

I hade this problem with ACA2011 and upgraded the entire office to ACA 2012 hoping that up grade would fix the problem.  The problem persisted with the upgrade on the machine in question and woked fine onthe rest of our machines.

Yes I have checked the Printer support file pathes multiple times  Other than the change in user name the paths match under each sub directory.

I have also triple checked the naming convetion of the plot drivers hoping I had just done something as simple as miss typing the name of the driver.  Those match also.

I have also checked the port for the plotter to make sure the driver is sendign to the correct port which it is.  I can get the machine to plot it does not plott correctly, it ignores the page set up settings and plots to the wrong roll and to the wrong paper size.

I hope this helps, please let me know if lyou need any further info, thanks for yor help! -Todd

[#4]

Where do you get the pagesetups from? Who set them up?

If you create the pagesetups on this problem machine, can others use these pagesetups?

This one machine's Drivers are not the same as the drivers on all the PCs, that's your problem: is this one a laptop? Or 'special' in some way? If all your PCs are 100% identical with driver versions, driver names, ports etc. you would not have the "none" issue appear as your pagesetup source PC would match this one.

Stopped working on one machine is the day something changed on tis one machine: what was it? You waited too long to find out I suspect, so perhaps a re-image of the PC to match all the others is now in order.

>>>...I hade this problem with ACA2011 and upgraded the entire office to ACA 2012 ...<<<

Very dramatic repair option for one PC.

[#5]

From your description, I would say that this one machine's windows driver is different or modified from the rest. Could a different driver version be in play? I would suggest uninstalling the windows driver and reinstalling it, with IT's blessing of course. Or you could go through each setting in the windows driver to make sure that they match.

Windows print driver settings can be modified by each user, and they can be subject to automatic updates. I've seen the updates go through without the user being aware of it.

In your case the printer support paths aren't at issue, because you are not using .pc3s.I was trying to figure out if you were pointing everyone to a server location for pc3s set for the company.

~ Mary

[#6]

We had the same thought,  there is and updated driver availale from HP and it was installed onthe machine in a attempt to fix the problem.  When that did not fix it we then completley unistalled the plotter and reinstalled it using the install CD, which installed the driver that origninally was working.  This did not fix the problem.  We also went through of the setting fro the driver on multiple occasions.  I looked throughthem  for in consistanceis on my own, both the CTC technician that was helping looked through them as well as the Tehcnician fromt he company who sold us the plotter looked through them.  The settign smatched in all cases.  Whats odd is when you look at these settigns through ACA in teh PRoperties button through the print manager or even through the print dialog box they do not match the settigns Iset in the driver and are not correct.  So I am wondering if ACA is not referencing the driver correctly or at all.  Do you have any ideas as to why the settings when viewed through ACA would be differant then the settings that were set through the driver itself?

Something else to consider,  as a test, I opened a test titleblock file with all of my preset page setups in it on the machine that is giving me trouble.  I revised the page setup preset that has not been working on this machine to have all of the correct sttings and saved the changes.  Changing the presets like this caused the machine to print correctly.  I then tried this new page setup preset on the rest of my machines.  Machines taht were printing fine could no longer print from this page setup correctly, so i set the presets back to the orignal settings.  ITs betterto have only one machine not printing insead of a bunch of them not printing.  Thanks again for your help, Todd

[#7]

Dean,

The pages set ups were created by me in our titleblock template file.  We have used these page set ups for years with our any problems until now.

The PC's we ordered at the same time, they are identical.  We have gone through everything you mentioned multiple time to ensure they are identical.  The "none" shows up on all machines after selecting the desired pageset up.  But only one machine does nto plot correctly.

We have been working on trying to figure it out since the day it happened, but have not been able to find the one thing that chagned.  An upgrade as yo suggest is the last thing I tried.  This issue started with ACA 2011 and we just upgraded to ACA 2012 in hopes that the upgrade would fix the problem.  No luck though.

We are a small firm with out a real IT person on staff, I do the best I can, and am learning something everyday, but I have no idea how to re image a machine as you suggest.  Is there a white paper, or a tutorial out there somewhere that would walk me through the steps or would you suggest that I hire an IT company to help me out with something like that? Thanks

[#8]

Create a pagesetup is a new sample template file using a core AutoCAD plotter, like DWG2PDF or DWG2DWF, by you, just like you did all the others, and test it. Still get the None prompt?

'None' prompt is triggered for one reason alone: the driver/pc3 file/version/whatever you used on your PC is not shared by others. That's all it is ever triggered by. Nothing else. So it begs the question: what is it about you that is different?

Another test: if someone else created a pagesetup on their PC and saved it to a new template file, would you get the None prompt if you imported and used it? Would any of the others get a None prompt with this new pagesetup?

[#9]

I set up the sample template using a core autocad plotter, DWG to DWF.pc3 like you suggested.  No I do not get the "None" prompt on any of the machines I test.

I also recreated my plot set up ushe computer in question.  The plot set up wroked correctly fro the computer in question.  I then tested the new plot set up on my other machines all machine are able to plot correctly but they do get the "None" prompt.  I still can seem to find the differance between this one machine and the rest that would be causing the "None" prompt but at least it finaly prints.  The problem however with this solution is this machine can no longer prit=nt legacy file that contain the old page set up with out first importing the page set up into all files.  Cumbersome but not the end of the world, we have todeal with this anyway as we access old file that have page set ups taht were created for plotters that we no longer have.  Thanks for all of lyour help on this subject!