HP 5500 margins

Am I insane, or is the leading edge of the HP-5500 really almost a freaking
inch? It seems that as the technology gets better and better, HP needs
larger and larger margins. One day soon we will need 8' long paper to get a
postage stamp image.
Anyway, is this real, or is there a way to get an even 1/2" margin all the
way around a 30X42 sheet on 30" paper with no trimming? Crossed fingers.
BTW, I already have the plotter set to smaller margins.

Gordon

 

HP support wanted to pass me off to second tier, who left me on hold. Manual
and website claim .35mm, but HP manuals are notorious for claiming one
thing, and providing another. Case in point our old 1050, which claimed .2"
trailing edge and .67" leading edge, when using rolls, but which could
actually only do closer to .45" trailing. This per HP support.
None the less, I have the new plotter set to smaller margins, and in AutoCAD
I have manually reduced my margins to 0, with crossing lines going beyond
the paper, and the resultant plot has about a .85" margin. Was hoping
someone here had an answer, as waiting for HP to get me an answer is almost
always slower by a few orders of magnitude than the newsgroups

Best,
Gordon

 

I have the 1050C curse you are referring to, and have experienced the
typical HP responses that you are having. Even when you get to the 2nd tier
of HP suport, they are just going to tell you that Autodesk has prgrammed
their plot module incorrectly, and that it is not sending the right
information to the plotter.

If you get a more detailed response, I will be surprised. Please post it
here if you do!

Justin

 

Yeah, I really am begining to hate HP, but they have as big a monopoly on
large format color as MS does with the OS market. I looked at the HP
website, and it says a leading and training edge of 35 @#$% mm by default
(ya gotta be kindding me) and in REALLY small print it says for some images
you can get down to 5mm, but no info on how. So, with a brand new multi
thousand dollar plotter we are going to have to manually trim two sides of
every sheet to get a 1/2" border that has been standard in architecture for
what, 150 years. Gotta love HP.
So, anyone know what settings will get you those mythical 5mm borders? Can
it even be done in AutoCAD?

Best,
Gordon

 

Did that. Set all my margins to 0 in Acad. Made a sheet with two lines, one
in each direction, going beyond the actual paper. I do this to verify the
real margins, as compared to what the website/manual/presales support
claims. In that configuration, with only lines, I get the full 35mm 1+ inch
leading and trailing edge margins. The very small print on the HP we site
claims 5mm margins on all 4 sides with "technical illistrations", but thus
far no word from HP on how to do it. I tried their on-line pre-sales support
chat, and the guy didn't even know what I was talking about

Crossed fingers. Or is everyone with a 5500 just trimming both sides?

Thanks,
Gordon

 

By doing 0 margins in Acad I can eliminate all non hardware issues and just
test what the hardware does. That said, the answer was a complex one.

1: Set the plotter to small margins at the front panel.
2: Set the driver on the server to use margins set at the plotter panel.
3: Recreate the Windows Printer on the local machines (it then inherits the
Use Front Panel settings from the shared printer.
4: Recreate PC3 files. It looks like you can set Use Front Panel in the PC3,
but it only seems to stick if it is set in the Windows driver when you build
the PC3. At that point it is actually greyed out but checked in the PC3.
5: Plot with small margins, no problem.

Note, in talking to HP support I was actually told to NOT use PC3s, to
expose Windows System Printers and then print direct. After some banging
around I found that HP didn't know what they where talking about and even in
R2002 I can use a PC3. So much for HP tech support! But at least they
started me down the right path. Plotting is working, and the office got me a
bottle of 12 year old Balvenie Double Wood Highland Single Malt Scotch for
my birthday. All is right in the world!

Best,
Gordon

 

Sounds like exactly the support that I got. Don't use PC3 files!!!!! Is
Autodesk aware that a lot of people are using HP plotters, and that this is
what HP is saying to customers?

For my short term solution to the margins problem, (HP1050C & LDT 2004) I
use the non-printable margins setting that the windows driver assigns when
you define the paper size (for 24x36 that is 0.33" top and bottom & 0.20" on
the sides) I then plot my view or window and use plot offset -0.33 Y
and -0.20 X. It drives me nuts seeing the drawing on the screen looking
shifted on the paper, but my 0.5" border comes out perfect. Thanks HP!!

 

Should have said -0.20, -0.20 for the offset, because 1050C has the
0.13-0.15" leading edge. Basically, you have to adjust the Y offset to
remove the leading edge.