Plot paper is bigger than normal

[gotphish001]

So I don't know what someone changed, but we can't get plots to work right anymore. We are plotting in 24x36 and we print everything from PDFs. Our problem is the top and bottom margins are too big. About double what they were before. The drawing is still to scale but the actual paper is physically taller so all the new drawings aren't the same physical size as the old ones. It's super annoying when I reprint just a few drawings and add them to an old set as they aren't the same size. I've tried shutting off the top and bottom margin check box. That fixes the margins on top and bottom but screws up the side margins much worse. I've tried using the full bleed which didn't fix it. I'm making my PDFs with the built in writer in ACA. My coworker is using 995 writer but his is doing the same thing. I'm just stumped. 

I'm not sure what else to try. I've been googling it all week and only found a few things that might be it, but nothing fixed it. Our plotter is an hp designjet 500. Maybe I'll luck out and someone else with that printer had a similar issue and solved it. 

[gotphish001]

Basically it's printing like if I printed in oversized and it was adding the margins except that I'm not. It should be subtracting them to keep the paper 24x36

[gotphish001]

My paper comes out basically 25x36. We did switch from 2012 to 2017. I thought maybe that was it. We still have 1 machine with 2012 on it and I tried printing off of that. It still prints the paper too big. I could probably scale it and get it to print right, but that kind of defeats the points of drawing stuff to scale in ACA. If I didn't want it to be to scale, then I'd sketch it with a fat crayon and just be done. haha I literally messed with this all day and solved nothing. There's only 2 of us at the office that use the plotter and ACA so I know someone that didn't know what they were doing wasn't messing with it. We actually print from PDF's only so people without ACA can print things without having access to mess up my drawings. 

[pendean]

Does your plotter driver have an "inked area" setting?

[David_W_Koch]

I am not sure it this is your issue exactly, but this Autodesk Knowledge Network article discusses issues with HP printers (including the Design Jet 500) and Windows 8 and 10 and AutoCAD 2015 and later.  There is a link to a printer driver for Design Jet 500 that is supposed to work with Windows 8/10 and AutoCAD 2015 and later.

[gotphish001]

You forgot to put the link in David.  I do that quite a lot. I didn't get a chance to check either of these two things today as I didn't get any extra time. A plotter head went bad anyway and we didn't have an extra so I wouldn't have been able to test it anyway. 

[gotphish001]

I did notice this today though making PDFs. Exactly what I do is: on a layout tab, I hit the big A drop down and pick print and get this menu. After I pick the general autocad pdf writer I get this picture. There's a red line around the border already. It's like it's making the PDF too big. I also tried not using full bleed. I tried Ansi and Arch D and a few others and all do the same thing.

[Emmsleys]

To add to David's response here is the link I believe he was referring to: 

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/HP-pri...

[David_W_Koch]

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@Emmsleys wrote:

To add to David's response here is the link I believe he was referring to: 

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/HP-pri...

---

Thanks.  My apologies for forgetting to include the link.  Must be getting old...  😉

[pendean]

In the preview, see all that RED on all four sides? Your drawing is way bigger as you noted.

I see a big problem myself, SCALE is set to CUSTOM then a forces inches entry. Why not replace CUSTOM with 1:1 instead in that pulldown?
Another concern: under WHAT TO PLOT, why Extents? that can allow AutoCAD to reach outside of your D-size paper area and create a larger file too. Use LAYOUT instead since you are, well, in a LAYOUT.

[gotphish001]

That's what I said about the red. It's screwed up when I make the PDF. How can it make the PDF bigger than what I have the Layout tab set too? I've checked it and tried different settings like a bizillion times.

I don't know how or when the scale got set to custom, but I tried to use the 1' to 1' default scale on the list and it still prints the paper too big. It doesn't seem to make a difference if it's custom 1:1 or default 1:1.

I was using extents because when I use layout it cuts the bottom of the title block off in the PDF. I could never figure out why.  I haven't been able to check the "inked area" setting if it's to be found on the plotter. It won't let me do any thing in the menus until we put the new plotter head in. I haven't seen that setting in the driver, but I'll check on the plotter menu itself when we get the part, hopefully tomorrow. 

It just makes my head spin that it literally says how big the paper size is and how big the printable area is, but then it prints it different. 

Edit:  If I try to make the pdf in layout it cuts off the bottom line off the title block in the pdf but when I print that pdf the line just hits the paper. That is using Arch D full bleed. If I change that to regular Arch D then it cuts off the right side. I guess I could get layout to work if I manually set the offsets. Probably by trial and error. I feel it shouldn't need to come to that. 

[gotphish001]

Oddly I set it to grab "layout" and the red lines go away, but it cuts the PDF off like I said above. So I manually set the offsets. When I get the offsets set so the preview is pretty much where it should be I get red lines on the two sides that I moved the offset towards. I unfortunately can't test it until the plotter get the part to see what it prints. I tried on another printer 11x17 but it can't really reproduce what the plotter does with a roll of paper because the smaller printer can't make a sheet of paper get bigger. haha  I also checked to make sure I didn't have anything else in the layout by using CTRL A. 

The link that David suggested isn't my issue. Well, we have that issue, but we print to PDFs and plot from those which is what it says to do as a work around if you can't get the drivers to be compatible. So we are already doing what that article suggests. 

[gotphish001]

I took off the custom scale as Pendean suggests and set it to a default 1:1. I was able to get rid of the red lines. If I uncheck center print and set the offsets to zero and then click center print again it will reset the offsets to what they should be and the red lines go away. It however still prints my paper about 25.5" x 36".

 I tried printing from layout as also suggested but it always prints way off center. So I adjusted the offsets to make it centered. That centers the plot on the preview. When I print it gives me the correct margin on the bottom, but it just adds the extra 1.5" to the top still making the paper 25.5x36. 

Also I noticed that when I'm printing from the PDF what I want to pick is print actual size, but if I pick "fit" instead it says it's 98% instead of 24x36. It should still say 100% because it's to a 1:1 at least that what it seems to me. So that's showing me there's a problem still.

What's really driving me crazy is that we have 2 work stations and both are having this same issue. One computer is using PDF995 to make the PDFs and has windows 7 pro on it. The other has windows 10 pro and is using the built in PDF writer in ACA to make the PDFs. The only thing both computers have in common is both have ACA2017. Also only one computer has the plotter driver on it and the other computer is using that driver remotely. So the drivers are the same driver. I've asked questions over at HP support but I might as well be asking the ice cream truck driver because they are no help. 

This morning I also reset back to default in the PDF properties but everything still comes out the same. Thought maybe something got changed somehow. I also tried fixing the margins manually. They are preset to .03 but you can't set them below zero so I can fix my issue very slightly by setting it to zero. I still need to make up another almost half inch. 

[gotphish001]

Am I crazy? So I start a new drawing and make a layout tab. Go into it's page setup and make it arch D to get the dashed line for printable area. I then draw a rectangle just inside the dashed line so I can mess with some settings and I have a base line. So when I pick layout as seen in the screen shot with zero offsets this is what I get in the other shot. How does that make sense? Should it just be the layout tab with the rectangle on the edge basically centered when using layout. Why is it so far off?

Also when the sheet was blank and I pick extents, I get red lines on all sides of the little preview image. How can it say it's too big for the paper when it's literally a blank page set to the same size.

[gotphish001]

I finally got the paper to print the correct 24x36 and not an inch too big off the roll. I had small margins on but they weren't working because the designjet was set to normal paper and small margins only works with certain papers. Also someone must have edited our main title block that we copy and put in all projects and made it 1/8" wider. So whenever someone grabbed that title block for a new project then it was wrong in all the references. I'm not sure if that was causing a problem with my page size or not since it was the width and the roll can't print any wider than it is. 

I'm still having an issue though. Entire drawing plots fine except my address in the title block. The top of the letters are cut off. Whats strange is that the project title is in between the lines of text that cut off however it prints fine. Our plotter is haunted or something. I printed 3 full size test plots and each one has the text cut off exactly the same way and in the same location with things in between all fine. I'm printing it from a PDF and the PDF text looks fine even when I zoom in super close.

As you can see in the pic. "department of public" prints fine but below and above it cuts the text off. It also print the edge of the title block on that side fine. 

 It's also bizarre because it doesn't cut it off in a straight line. Most letters are cut off in what seems to be a straight line but others aren't cut off much at all. A few letter are cut off more and only show like a dot at the bottom.

[dbroad]

I wouldn't recommend plotting extents or display.  Use a window selection and decide what you want to plot.  Then either decide what your binding margin should be and set that to the origin or use the center plot checked.  My standard for years has been to design my titleblock to have points on each of the four corners (on layer defpoints) that exactly match the sheet size (24"x36") that I intend to plot on.  Then selecting that window takes care of the binding margin for me when I center the plot.

Another alternative is to set up your layout exactly as you want it to plot with no extraneous lines outside of the paper area and to use that option with center checked.  I always use 1:1 scale in layouts.  I typically never set up custom sizes for standard size sheets.

I have no idea what is causing your letter tops being cut off.  New font problems perhaps?

[john.vellek]

HI @gotphish001,

I apologize that I dint see this earlier!

Can you share a file via etransmit that shows all of these peculiarities? If it needs to remain private send to me at john.vellek@autodesk.com.

I don't have the plotter but I can try to work through the issue to the best of my ability.

[gotphish001]

Thanks but I got it working after probably 40+ hours of troubleshooting. Good thing we were in between projects and I had nothing really to do. I tried so many  things that I'm not 100% sure what the fix was. I do know that I can't make a drawing using the built in pdf in autocad any more. I've been using the pdf writer that adobe puts in autocad as a choice. No one really changed any setting that I found. I think that the possible cause was that windows 10 did an update that broke something that was unrelated to the update. I checked and there was an update around when I noticed the problem. 

I'd sent you a file just so you can peek, but I'm pretty certain it's was on my computer or software that was the cause. As my coworker could print drawings I made fine and pdfs I made fine. However I couldn't print his correctly even though he was using a different OS and 995 as a pdf maker. All his variables were different than mine however mine worked on his but his didn't work on mine. That was the thing that was really making me scratch my head.