ADT 20005 CALs driver question

I'm currently testing ADT 2005 in preparation for rolling it out later this
summer. In AutoCAD 2000i I could set up the CALs driver that comes with
AutoCAD so that it printed directly to a port as opposed to a file. In ADT I
tried the same thing, but even though I have it pointed at a CALs friendly
plotter, every time I go to plot to it up comes the "Enter a File Name"
window. I can't get the ADT 2005 Cals plotter driver to plot directly to a
port.

Is this a bug with the driver? Is it something that I should be able to fix
easily? eg. updated CALs driver? Minor modification to a ".ini" or ".inf"
file? How about fiddling with the ".pc3" file?

 

We're plotting to an old Calcomp Drawing Master 800. The Calcomp driver
provided with AutoCAD supports plotting lines, arc, circles and text using
truetype fonts to this device, but it can't handle images (logos, ariel
photos of building sites, and the such.) In order to get a drawing
containing regular entities, truetype fonts AND images to plot out on it I
need to use CALS formatted plot data.

The DrawingMaster is supposed to emulate an HP plotter, but every time I've
tried sending an HP-GL/2 format file to the plotter, the plotter has hung.

I might have to look at autospooling but that will require that I come up
with a way of spooling CALS files to an NDPS Printer (Novell network).

 

Hi Phillip,

From what I've seen, CALS is the best way to go for older Calcomp plotters.
Make sure and pick the "dimensional" driver, not the MIL driver. Also, I
believe you need to change the properties of the driver after it's installed
so it creates the plot file with the maximum resolution the plotter
supports. Try 400dpi.

You will have to setup Autospool. I don't know if LPR.EXE can print out
to a novell printer, but it seems that Novell should provide a similar
command line utility. See this example:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=2891729&linkID=2475323

And of course in your AutoSpool batch file, you can sometimes use one of
these formats:

copy pltfile.cal LPT1:
copy pltfile.cal \\server\printershare

Chris