Reproduction practices

[Anonymous]

Our company has recently experienced some dissapointment with our
longtime reproduction service. Some plan sets were 'lost' in transit on
their delivery vehicles, the quality of the reproductions had slipped
noticably in recent months, etc. As the customer service experience proved
less than satisfactory when we attempted to resolve these issues, we decided
to seek out another reprographer.
This morning, a coworker and I (both of us are cad managers at the
'team' level), met with representatives from one reprographic company. We
were prepared to ask some simple questions: how much per square foot, how
fast can you turn around 35 sets of 150-page plans, etc. However, we
immediately discovered that these folks no longer produce bluelines. In
fact, according to these fellows, there is only one company in the "region"
that still does (we are located in a suburb of Chicago - a rather large
market as those things go). Everybody else has converted to a digital shop,
providing scan and plot blacklines on bond. Of course, the services go on
from there, including ftp/email delivery of plot files to the reprographer,
Reprodesk Client for submitting jobs, online plan rooms, and FM solutions
that promise to turn plotting into a profit center for the company.
I'm not about to claim that bluelines are a superior technology to
digital blacklines. If I worked for myself, I'd be relieved that I didn't
need to invest in a plotter. But is the train really moving this fast?
Civil engineering is not an industry known for quickly adapting its
practices to new technologies. Can it be that there is only a single diazo
shop left in our service area? What have others experienced? If you have
switched to all digital services, how has the transition gone? Any one
willing to share their reflections will be greatly appreciated.
Perhaps more interestly, what do you suppose drove this change? From
the civil eng. perspective, it is difficult to imagine a movement to ditch
the blueline process coming from the clients - even the more
forward-thinking public work departments are about 5 years behind the curve.
Is it as sinister as I fear, that capitalists have gone and fixed something
that wasn't broke, in order to sell millions of dollars worth of unneeded
and unwanted 'improvements' to industry, and, ultimately, the taxpayer?

Looking forward to the hours of work in retraining the staff,

Adam Wuellner
www.civiltechinc.com

[Anonymous]

As far as I can tell, NO. Halftones from an Oce plotter seeem to be much
grainier, and generally darker. One thing to notice, Oce and HP use
contradictory definitions of grey percentages, so a 30% grey in HP is a 70%
grey in Oce, a 75% grey in HP is a 25% grey in oce, etc. Even after your
repro guys think to account for that, they still won't be identical, but
you'll be a lot closer.

Still, the graininess, and the tendency to overwrite lines with hatches (a
problem HP has addressed) seem to me to be good reasons to avoid Oce.

"Adam Wuellner" wrote in message
news:AE6C28B8E4ABDEB1E482F573357840D5@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> > If we plot here, and send it out, we get a blackline. That's no big
deal.
> > BUT, if we just create plot files, and ftp them, the plots do not look
> quite
> > the same when they come back - repro-desk is screwing up hatches, and
> > altering lineweights subtly.
>
> I have been using digital blackline reproductions for the job I am
currently
> working on, as a test case for the company. I have been disappointed with
> the scan>plot results for the same reasons you have noted about the
> ReproDesk method. Our grays, (we represent existing topography in 60%
gray,
> some gridlines in 75%, etc.) are not accurately reproduced, and we get
> comments about how this can't be seen, that's too dark, etc. I was hoping
> ReproDesk would allow me to eliminate those problems, but I think the Oce
> plotters are going to force me to change my philosophy on the use of
grays.
> I don't think I'm going to be able to get my nice, smooth HP DesignJet
gray
> out of an Oce plotter. Am I?
>
>