Catia printing

[chris tobin]

Have a question regarding catia printing on an 8150n. We have been printing to a 4mv and a QMS printer 11x17 plots from catia, we just upgraded to an 8150n. Now when we send the plots to the 8150n the data light blinks a couple times and nothing comes out. We can send text files and they print no problem, just plots don't print. Any idea what we need to do to get this to work? Thanks!

[A. Clay Stephenson]

What format is CATIA configured for output. You need to make sure that the CAD output is in a format the 8150 expects like postscript or PCL. The other thing that could cause this problem is not enough printer memory. Are you sending data to the printer via the lp -o binary option?

[chris tobin]

Here is a liitle more information, hope this helps. Using Catia 4.24. In the VPS Printer Initialization file for the 8150 we have defined:

TCPPRTR=raw,

does this help, should we change it to something different? Also if it helps we copied the 4mv VPS settings and basically changed to ip address so the data would print to the new 8150n. Is there settings that need to be changed besides? We have 72 megs of memory in the printer, should this be enough to print Cad files, or should we have more. Thanks again for all the help.

[chris tobin]

Forgot to mention to, if the printer VPS setup is for RAW, and the header of the print job to me looks like it is hpgl could this be why the printer is just dumping the job and not priting it? Should the TCPPRTR line be something different instad of RAW? Here is the header of a sample job we are sending that wont print on the 8150n:

%DATASET -------- PROC=******** STEP=STEP0 DDNAME=SYSUT2 ------------------
%%EndOfDocument
%!
%%IncludeFeature: orientation (landscape)
%%IncludeFeature: emulation (hpgl) input (Ledger 3)
%%IncludeFeature: expand (on)
%%IncludeFeature: pen(1 1 1)
%%IncludeFeature: pen(2 2 1)
%%IncludeFeature: pen(3 5 1)
%%IncludeFeature: pen(4 8 1)
%%IncludeFeature: pen(5 9 1)
%%IncludeFeature: pen(6 12 1)
%%IncludeFeature: pen(7 15 1)
%%IncludeFeature: pen(8 20 1)
%%EndComments
IN;
IN;

[Bill Hassell]

The LaserJet 4MV is a very different primnter from the LaserJet 8150. You need to contact CATIA support to ask if they have a patch or newer config file to support the 8150. Because HPGL is designed primarily for plotters, implementation on LaserJet printers is not universal. The raw option simply means that the data will be sent exactly as generated by the plotting program.

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris:

I just checked the spec's on the 8150n and it does NOT speak HPGL. This is your problem.

[chris tobin]

That is it, perfect thanks!!! I'll see if they can convert the hpgl code to pcl or postscript or something.