Printing to HP Pagewide XL Plotter

[cwrentmore]

Hello,

Has anyone had any luck using the Revit Print Dialog to change plot sizes by going to Settings --> Setup to change the plot size for an HP Pagewide XL 4200 plotter?  Normally when you go into Setup and choose a new size the change updates the plotter properties with the same size.  At least this is how it works with Oce plotters.  There are three printer drivers available for the HP 4200 and none of them update correctly.  If you go directly into the Properties of the plotter (instead of through Setup) and change the size in properties it will come out correctly.  The benefit of going into Setup is you can pre-define the plot settings an save them for all users.  This is lost when going directly into the printer properties.

[barthbradley]

Aren't you able to populate the "Name" drop-down under "Printer" with differently named setups for that printer? 

[cwrentmore]

Unfortunately, that is the part that does not seem to be working.  If I save two different Names, such as one named Plot24x36 and another named Plot 12x18, when choosing between the two the plot sizes will not change (and they do not show that they changed when looking at the plotter properties).  The sizes are correctly saved in the setups.  It's as if Revit is unable to update the settings within the plotter properties after the user makes the Setup selection.  Any thoughts on possible fixes?

[HVAC-Novice]

Why don't you create a PDF from Revit (export option or your preferred PDF writer) and then print from the PDF program? That way you eliminate any issue Revit could cause. 

I never directly printed from Revit and making a PDF also gives me the option to see how the actual print will look like before using paper. 

[cwrentmore]

Thanks, that is certainly an alternative.  I'm hoping to avoid the extra step and save some time for users.  I know using the same Settings --> Setup process works for other printers.  None of the three available printer drivers for the HP Pagewide XL plotter seem to work.  I'm not sure if that would be a Revit issue because the Setup process is not updating the printer driver or if it is an HP issue because it is working with other printers.  I'm sure it depends on if you ask Autodesk or HP 🙂

[HVAC-Novice]

For my workflow PDF isn't an extra step since most of my PDF never get printed, but used on a screen. And I also always find some error on PDF that I don't seem to see when I just look at the sheet in Revit. PDF basically is a sheetset on a screen. We also use Bluebeam for electronic plan review by multiple people and start to use PDF for field-markup (on table tor phone)

Anyway, you could do the PDF route just to eliminate which party is causing the problem. Even if you don't plan to use it long-term. If you keep printing from Revit to HP and have problems, you never find out which is causing the problem 😀

[Noah]

I know this is an old topic, We just had a pagewide 4200 installed in our office, and we are having the same issue with both Revit and Autocad.  Were you able to find a solution?

[cwrentmore]

Yes, we ended up using the HPGL driver for a Pagewide XL 5000 from 2020.  It has worked fine for a few years now.  Looks like it is still available to download from the HP support site if you want to give it a try.  It's listed under the second Basic Drivers option.

HP PageWide XL 5000 Printer series Software and Driver Downloads | HP® Customer Support

[Noah]

Thank you very much!!!! That worked like a charm. Just a heads up, the newest 2023 driver for that plotter works perfectly as well.  You just saved us a ton of time and work.  I have passed the info onto our plotter guys so they have the solution for the future.