240w/470w AutoCAD printing without opening in AutoCAD

Jason...it is like playing Russian Roulette. I think it's one of those dirty little secrets all mfgs won't really admit, because in the end, you can print directly dwgs from AutoCAD. But in the real world, settings will get lost,changed, or mis-interpreted,especially on a complex dwg file with lots of stuff imbedded in it. Having an AutoCAD license on the server will fix thi$$$$, but I find that converting (plot to file) a dwg in AutoCAD to a plt is the way to go without added expense.

Thanks for the reply, I totally agree. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something =)

check these out - May help you! 1 of 3

The aatched ACAD_HowTp.pdf has been moved to www.documentmall.com


accountname: art_post
username: p4pusers
passcode: goodpals

select the p4p user cabinet, then the wideformat folder, then Ricoh Folder, then ACAD Folder

2 of 3

The aatched ACAD_HowTp.pdf has been moved to www.documentmall.com


accountname: art_post
username: p4pusers
passcode: goodpals

select the p4p user cabinet, then the wideformat folder, then Ricoh Folder, then ACAD Folder

3 of 3

The attached The How to prepare a DWG file in Auto CAD to print as desired document has been moved to www.documentmall.com


accountname: art_post
username: p4pusers
passcode: goodpals

select the p4p user cabinet, then the wideformat folder, then Ricoh Folder, then ACAD Folder

Bandit, I appreciate your suggestions, but all of them start with "Open the drawing in AutoCAD". Personally, I am intimately familiar with sending plots from AutoCAD and saving DWGs, that it not the issue I'm asking about.

The situation I am asking about is a customer who does not have AutoCAD users. They have a seat of AutoCAD running on the Plotbase Computer, but they do not know how to use AutoCAD. Someone else makes the DWG and emails it to them. They use PlotclientWin to submit the job.

Now our machine says that you can print .DWG natively and not have to open them in AutoCAD. However, this will work only if the person sending the DWG to you set it up perfectly. If they did not, you get "unexpected results".

The real issue I'm addressing here is a customer being told that DWGs can be printed "Just like PDFs". Which is very untrue and misleading.

Customers should be educated about the limitations of "DWG Printing". It isn't a limitation of our machine, this is the same as any machine trying to do this.

sorry - I misunderstood the issue! I agree with Chops, then - get a PLT file!

That is good advice, and advice I've made my customer aware of.

I know this situation may seem a bit strange, but since the 240w has entered the market it is one I've encountered at least four times. We've been an Océ dealer for 9 years, and I'd never seen it with that product.

The change seems to be twofold. The Engineers and Architechs that used to provide the finished plots to the end user are now increasingly turning that service from a "cost of doing business" to a revenue center. The end users have wanted to have the capability to print and copy these drawings, but have never been able to justify the expense of owning their own machine.

The 240w has entered the market with an amazing price point considering the features that it offers, enticing these end users to acquire an enginnering copier/scanner/printer they intend to use to maximize their capabilities.

So basically, the 240w is perfectly positioned to be sold to customers who have no Architech or Engineer on staff, delegating functions normally held by an educated CAD user to secretaries and salesmen.

To compound our problems, the 240w (while I think it is a GREAT machine) is not the easiest to use. Some of the software is counter-intuitive or downright confusing. Some features (PDF scanning and DWG printing) doesn't work as customers and sales would expect.

Now I've gone on a rant =). But seriously, these issues are arising and I think their frequency will increase as more people become aware of the 240w.

On a side note, it reminds me of the situation in color machines a few years ago. Color machines were once only owned by high-end graphics shops. They were used for high-end output and proofing by knowledgable users. Then more and more businesses decided to purchase them for office printing. Secretaries and general office workers began to print on them and began asking "why is my powerpoint blue printing out purple?".

JasonR, you mentioned problems with PDF scanning. Don't know of any, what do you know?

PDFs scanned on the 240 and 470 are about three times larger than a TIFF file scanned on the same machine. For Example:

A 30x42 document I scanned on a 240 was 420KB TIFF file, and a 1.2MB PDF file. The same document scanned on an Océ TDS400 was 432KB TIFF file and 431KB PDF. These files are all scanned at 200DPI.

When you are posting these files online, the size difference is quite significant. For the specific customer I ran into this problem with they were actually unable to open the PDF files (because they have very outdated PCs and a slow internet connection).

I've spoken to Ratio Engineers about this and they confirm that the file sizes are what they would expect. There is no fix currently being planned.

On the 480 with the "Ricoh Scanning" option this should be bypassed since the Ricoh controller will be doing the compression and not the Plotbase software.

Thanks for the response. Interesting what you said about the 480W Ricoh Scanning option, have you confirmed this? I would not have thought that they would be different - but if so, that's a good thing.

the 480 embedded scsanner option is the same scan as the Ricoh small format systems "GW Architecture". Can scan to TIFF or PDF - not sure what compression level, does anybody know what it is on the small formats?

The Ricoh's use G4 compression on both TIFF and PDF, the files sizes are almost identical.

A 51k TIFF file was a 52k PDF.