Plotting Problems in screening pens

I was wondering if anyone is having a problem with plotting from 2002 and
having certain pens screen properly?

We were using R14 and the plots came out fine. Now that we have moved to
2002 we cannot get the plots to come out right. We have 3 different pens we
need to have screened and they refuse to plot screened. It seems to ignore
our request for those certain pens to be screened and plots them at a
standard pen setting. Any idea what could be the culprit and how can we fix
it?

We are using AutoCAD 2002 and our plotter is about 8 months old. It's a
DesignJet 500 using the HP DesignJet 500 42+HPGL2 Card driver. We were using
a computer to spool our drawings to the plotter but swapped to an HP
Jetdirect Print Server 600N.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

TIA

Craig

 

I also forgot to add our workstations are XP Pro.

Also, when we send the drawings to our Xerox printer, everything looks like
it should and the 3 pens we need screened are screened.

 

Yes Tom,
The plotter is set for software and not palette driven. Anyway, we cannot
use the palette setup being that this plotter does not offer all the pen
widths we need, plus it doesn't offer screening pens. The palette settings
are extremely limited so thats why we must use software to control the pens.

I just got off the phone with our local AutoCAD dealer and he said the
reason possibly is we are using the ADI Windows driver for the JetDirect
card as to where we used to use the HEIDI driver when we were using the
computer to spool the plots. He said the ADI driver will not allow screening
but the HEIDI driver will. The reason we can't use the HEIDI driver is it
takes 12-15 minutes just to send one plot.

 

In alt.cad.autocad , Craig wrote :

And I thought I was having all these symptoms due to me using a older
Designjet600 of which XP/HP drivers seem to be crap, we lost screen and
paper size features so we maintain an ME machine just for writing the plot
files ! sorry I have no solution.
Ron

 

Ron and Craig, we also use an old DesignJet 600 and have no problems
plotting. I downloaded the latest windows driver from HP's website and setup
our 2000i stations for plotting on XP. The trick with this "crap" driver as
you put it, is to go into the Printing Preferences setting when you
right-click Properties for the driver. Only here can you really deal with
the driver. Of course I assume you know HP Config and all ADI printer
drivers are obsolete post-R14, so if you're using color-dependent plot
styles (.ctb files) you must set screening in the plot style table editor.
Frankly, this is far superior to the R14 method, where you had to use HP
Config. You may also want to make sure that the pens you set for screening
are color 7 (not necessarly pen 7), so your screening percentage always
refers to full black. I'm still getting used to plotting in 2000i, but in
certain ways it's far better than 14. Ron, your DJ 600 still has some life
left it in, even under XP!! Of course if you're talking about the quality of
screening (or lack thereof), that's another story...... ;-)