OCE TDS400 - Serious Concerns

I am the IT buyer for the City of Ventura, CA. Our Engineering Division purchased an Oce TDS400 2 years ago, and problems with network printing have occurred since installation. The IT staff has examined and tested the network drives and connections over and over, and concluded the issue rests w/ the printer. While Oce promises the machine can print "all document types, regardless of format" for AutoCad and Windows, this has not been the case. We have had little luck getting it to plot AutoCad correctly and .TIFF files. We've had our 3rd party reseller and Oce perform maintenance, and it always seems to come back to the unit. Has anyone experienced similar problems and would you say this printer/copier/plotter is a keeper?

Thanks,
Burris DeBenning
City of Ventura

 

Are you using Repro Desk or Print Exec Workgroup? If you are using the Océ
Client Tools and Repro Desk, many of our customers have experienced
successful results.

purchased an Oce TDS400 2 years ago, and problems with network printing have
occurred since installation. The IT staff has examined and tested the
network drives and connections over and over, and concluded the issue rests
w/ the printer. While Oce promises the machine can print "all document
types, regardless of format" for AutoCad and Windows, this has not been the
case. We have had little luck getting it to plot AutoCad correctly and .TIFF
files. We've had our 3rd party reseller and Oce perform maintenance, and it
always seems to come back to the unit. Has anyone experienced similar
problems and would you say this printer/copier/plotter is a keeper?

 

Can't speak for the 400, but we have a TDS800 with ReproDesk, and all the other Oce software - no network problems. We go through about four to six, 650' rolls a day, almost all of these plots sent from individual workstations. About 45% of these plots are AutoCAD drawings, 45% are TIFF files, and the remaining 10% are copies (scan=>plotter). BTW, this all runs on your standard, every day, Microsoft network.

 

Over here, some problems regarding orientation when bought, but a TDS600 and a 9300 are plotting fine during +2 years.
The TDS600 however is managed off-line:
All users use a dummy plotter on the plotserver, witch results in plot-files on the server. Then the end user mails the men in the Xerox-room to say: Hey, i have made a plot, could you make me 4 copies and send them to mr X, Y and Z an 1 to myself ?
Then the people in the Xerox room use the Oce print Exec LT to pick up the plot file and send it to the plotter.
In this way:
-> test plots don't result in waste of paper
-> plotting / scanning and copying dont get mixed up, the people in the Xerox room can administer their own tasks.
-> the Desingers have all the control what they want to plot, and how (pen settings etc..)

The 9300 is a normal "windows" network printer, on a Intel Print box, using TCP/IP. The only computer witch has access to the print box is the print server. All users plot using the shared printer on the print server.

 

Buris,
Can you expand on the type of problems you are having? Are Cad plots cut off? Line types/weights wrong? What are the problems with TIFFs? What version of the controller software is the TDS400 running?

 

Scott.

Have you heard of anyone having problems printing directly from Acad to a
TDS 400?? We're thinking about upgrading our 9400 to the TDS 400 and want
to make sure.

 

I have not heard of anything specific. Really - I have not heard one way or
another - so don't flame me if there are problems. I do know that a 9400
does not have a scanner. When you upgrade from a 9400 to a TDS400, you get a
PC installed that is a Power Logic Controller. Repro Desk then talks to the
Power Logic Controller instead of being connected directly to the device.
Thus Repro Desk is able to get back channel information that it previously
was unable to obtain. So there are benefits to upgrading.

 

ZZWolfe:

I will review the notes from our civil engineer and elaborate later today or tomorrow. Thanks for the queries.

Burris

 

is a 9400 and 9476 the same machine or just a touch different?? We've got
the 9476 and it's got the scanner, but the machine has 9400 tags all over
it.

We've got the controller (print server) with Reprodesk right now. We print
directly to it 98% of the time and get errors alot

"there was an error found while printing the document "doc name here" to
LPT1, do you want to retry or cancel"

We where first told that we could print to it directly and use Reprodesk.
Once we get the machine and start getting the error, we're told that it gets
"confused" when we print to it. Now we're told that the memory is full when
we get the error. I just want to make sure we're not going to get the same
problems/errors when/if we go to the TDS400.

I do know that a 9400

 

You are using LPT1. We are sending the data faster than the device can
accept it and faster than the retries can help it. Have you tried printing
to it using it as a Windows printer? If you upgrade to TDS400 the situation
should improve.

 

Can you describe what the problem is?
Are you getting errors in the Print Queue?
Are you printing directly to the controller for windows printing?

We have a TDS600 and the controller is based on Windows NT Workstation. It
has a built in limit of 10 connections therefore if you will encounter
problems if you are connecting directly to the print queue on the
controller. The workaround is to create a print queue on a server and
connect it to the Oce controller thereby taking up only 1 connection, Have
all the workstations connect to the queue on the server for printing and
plotting.

Another change we had to make was a modification to the registry on the
server hosting the OCE queue, There was a limitation with the number of
ports Windows (NT and 2000) uses for LPR printing.

Add a REG_DWORD value in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\LPDSVC\lpr

Name: UseNonRFCSourcePorts
Data Type : REG_DWORD
Value: 1

Search www.google.com for more info on the reg setting.

HTH

Jose

purchased an Oce TDS400 2 years ago, and problems with network printing have
occurred since installation. The IT staff has examined and tested the
network drives and connections over and over, and concluded the issue rests
w/ the printer. While Oce promises the machine can print "all document
types, regardless of format" for AutoCad and Windows, this has not been the
case. We have had little luck getting it to plot AutoCad correctly and .TIFF
files. We've had our 3rd party reseller and Oce perform maintenance, and it
always seems to come back to the unit. Has anyone experienced similar
problems and would you say this printer/copier/plotter is a keeper?

 

We've had very good luck with our current TDS 600. It was a factory
replacement for our original TDS 600 which had a number of problems we could
not get resolved. The replacement has worked very well.

John

 

How is it poss. to print long posters with the Oce TDS400?
I get them set up and they look good in the plot preview, then they come out all cut up 36" tall & 24" wide

 

Over the last 3 years, most of the OCE product line that's installed in our national clientbase has worked well when you use the HP755CM Windows plot driver (NOT the HDI driver).

Its worked for Oce 9xxx and TDS series of plotters...I've got about 50 Oce plotters working on our clients AutoCAD, Land, Map, & ADT software installations...most I've setup with Page Setups so they can switch between full and half size plots or ship Plot files to their plot vendor.

They vary from using Reprodesk, Howitzer and Apprentice plot management software or simply plotting to a print queue on the network.

And no, we don't sell plotters and based on the ground rules of this forum I'll hesitate on posting my opinions regarding Oce development and support for their product.

Daniel W. Hughes
Manager of Project Services
Taylor Technologies Inc.

P.S.
In regards to the other question that someone posted on long plots, make sure to set up a custom paper size for the size of the long plot in the PC3 file.

Then make sure you don't have "center the plot" turned on...if this setting is turned on, most plotters that can produce long plots will get confused by this setting...and produce nothing but a blank piece of paper using the default paper size in the PC3 file.

 

We in Oce Phoenix have no control over what happens in the sales channel or
Oce system printer or HDI drivers; however, if you have concerns about the
LDF HDI driver, Repro Desk, or Plan Center, I would be interested in hearing
them: .

our national clientbase has worked well when you use the HP755CM Windows
plot driver (NOT the HDI driver).

plotters working on our clients AutoCAD, Land, Map, & ADT software
installations...most I've setup with Page Setups so they can switch between
full and half size plots or ship Plot files to their plot vendor.

software or simply plotting to a print queue on the network.

I'll hesitate on posting my opinions regarding Oce development and support
for their product.

sure to set up a custom paper size for the size of the long plot in the PC3
file.

setting is turned on, most plotters that can produce long plots will get
confused by this setting...and produce nothing but a blank piece of paper
using the default paper size in the PC3 file.