Best driver for Oce 9400?

Since we've upgraded to AutoCAD to 2004, plotting to the Oce has been real
slow - processing takes a long time (3 - 4 minutes vs 30 secs with ACAD
2002). We've had an Oce tech out to look at it and hardware wise its maxed
out - his only suggestion is to find a better driver. What would be a good
driver to use for an Oce 9400 with firmware ver 4 installed?

Currently we use an HP750 driver (this driver had better output than any Oce
drivers) and plot to a file, then use Oce's Plot Director to move the file
to the Oce. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

We've always used Oce's HDI driver. The latest on their website is version
4.1 for 2004. I've had no problems with it at all. We plot right to the
plotter through the network. Quality is as good as a 300dpi plotter will
give you. We had to set the plotter hardware to do "cloud dithering" for
grayscale which looks much better than the default "half-tone". I think the
cloud dithering is what the HP driver causes the plotter to switch to, but
you can set the plotter to use that by default through settings in it's
control pad.

Even using the Oce HDI driver, while the file is loading up into the plotter
queue, the control pad display will flash "PROCESSING HP-GL/2"

 

Why are you plotting to plt and then moving the files to the plotter. try
www.plotstream.com.

G

 

The best driver ever is included in the Bentley Interplot Driver pack. It contains a driver that generates CALS files.
Once plotted, these can be sent to a Oce plotter, without any calculation or rasterization in the plotter itself.
It is expensive, but it pays back in installation time:
All long-plot mode issues solved immediatly, no additional RAM or controller needed in the plotter. Just the base model of the 9300 or 9400 is enough.