VPC7, AutoCAD, HP Designjet 130

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mubogus@aol.com - 30 Mar 2006 17:47 GMT

Has anyone had experience in using VPC7 to print AutoCAD files to an HP
Designjet printer? I can print to the Designjet with the VPC Additions
printer, but this does not give me a print dialog to do a page setup.
So, I'm only able to print 8-1/2 x 11, even when the printer is loaded
with a 24" wide roll.

Thanks for any help, advice and wisdom.

If I get this figured out I will post the procedure.

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Steve Jain - 30 Mar 2006 20:34 GMT

>Has anyone had experience in using VPC7 to print AutoCAD files to an HP
>Designjet printer? I can print to the Designjet with the VPC Additions
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
>If I get this figured out I will post the procedure.

If you want anything beyond basic printing abilities you'll need to
install the printer drivers inside VPC. Depending on the printer,
this can be a piece of cake or pure hell.

Signature

Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/
I am not employed of Microsoft.

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Paul Power - 30 Mar 2006 21:19 GMT

Do the page setup on the Mac side first or directly at the printer.
Once that is completed, it will print from Windows with the settings
that you specified.

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mubogus@aol.com - 31 Mar 2006 01:21 GMT

> Do the page setup on the Mac side first or directly at the printer.
> Once that is completed, it will print from Windows with the settings
> that you specified.

So far I've spent, well, several years trying to figure out how to do
this. I'm not a Mac newbie: been using Macs since day one. I eventually
took the coward's way out and bought a PC. This is the only reason, the
only use I had for a PC: but when I looked at how many billable
man-hours I wasted on trying to do it on a Mac, I had to capitulate. So
I just fired up the darn PC once or twice a week to print out AutoCAD
files. Other than that I NEVER used the PC: I'm a devoted, die-hard
Mac user.

Now, after another few months of frustration trying again to do it via
VPC, I settled on using a Print-to-PDF utility in Windows XP.
Embarrassingly enough, this idea came from "AutoCAD LT 2005 for
Dummies."

This allows me to change page setups, page sizes, color or mono, etc.,
on the fly while working exclusively in the Virtual PC world. After
I've printed to PDF in VPC, I can simply drag the PDF files from my
Virtual PC desktop to my Mac OSX desktop. I then do the hardcopy
printing in my comfortable Mac environment. This also handles all the
scaling issues, since AutoCAD files are intended to be printed out as
scalable blueprints. I just print-to-PDF at full size using AutoCAD DWG
Viewer in VPC. This gives me a PDF file that I can slide over to the
Mac side, and them print at full architectural size, say 42"x30" or for
a half-size print, just have Adobe PDF Reader print out at 50%.

The utility I'm using (recommended in AutoCAD LT for Dummies) is
PDF995. It is a free download at www.pdf995.com. It is shareware of
sorts: there's a $10 charge to get rid of some ad windows. But, if
you want to use it for free, it's totally legal. But, I'm going to
pay the fee. This is Soooooo worth it.

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mubogus@aol.com - 31 Mar 2006 01:26 GMT

Thanks Steve: I did try to install the HP Designjet driver. It was pure
hell, yes! I tried every trick I could think of but still couldn't get
it to print. One complication however: My HP is connected to my Mac via
Airport as a remote printer. The printer is so big that I've put it in
another room. My guess is that if I had the Designjet hardwired to the
Mac, I COULD do this via VPC by installing the HP Driver directly into
Windows XP.

If you're interested, I've posted my work-around today on this same
thread. It ain't elegant, but it works.

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Mac Forum / Applications / Virtual PC / March 2006

VPC7, AutoCAD, HP Designjet 130