page orientation?

I have had an issue since upgrading to 2005 where the page setup
orientation seems to randomly switch from landscape to portrait and will
stay that way until I switch it back. The problem is magnified when I batch
print 40 or so drawings as I leave the office for the day. Come in the next
morning and find that the page orientation switched on the second drawing
and 39 of them are now unuseable.

This is an issue that I can't seem to produce with any reliability so my
var can't be of much use.

Has anyone else experienced this? And, if so, found a fix/workaround for
it? This occurs both at home and at work. The only comonality between the
two setups is xp sp2 and sw 2005, work is 3.0 and home is 2.0. The home
install was a fresh install on a new computer.

 

Brian,

What I have found is that any time I "Save As PDF", it will automatically
change the page setup orientation to portrait, even though it creates the
PDF correctly. Therefore any subsequent hard-copies will try to print
portrait unless you manually change it back to landscape.

I bet that this has some relationship with the problem you are describing.
If this is the case, it is reproducible for your VAR to troubleshoot.

I haven't gotten irritated enough to turn this in as a bug yet. I guess I
should have.

 

I had this exact problem for ages last year, early after 2005 but also
with 2004 if I remember. It drove me to distraction. I wasted hours
and hours and then.... I changed jobs and don't have that problem
anymore!!!! I did extensive research and spoke to my var about it many
times. They suggested using pdf995 to make pdfs - and I believe it
did work better than the saveas pdf function.

It was the printing hardcopy that really got to me though, we had an
HP3330 there as well as a plotter. What kind of printer are you using?


Zander

 

Using a officejet v40xi for most things, a Ricoh copier for when I need
the 11x17 print size, and an older hp gl2 pen plotter for E size.

Thanks for the pdf suggestion. I'll have to pay attention to the pdf
thing as I had not made that coorelation before. I do a pdf for every file
set that I send to any of our vendors and may have to consider a different
method.

 

We use an HP 2500C for A & B prints. For C & D prints we use an HP 450C
plotter. My templates are already set up to go to the correct
printer/plotter as needed. So I theoretically should never have to go to
the print setup dialog. However, like I mentioned previously, if I make a
PDF of the drawing, I will always have to go to the print setup dialog to
switch it back to landscape every time.

There have ALWAYS been issues with SW printing. Every release/SP seems to
fix one area, but break another. I have even seen some issues get fixed for
several releases/SP's and then return later on. Seems kind-of crazy that in
many cases, this is what the software is ultimately producing for companies.
Yet it still to this day has problems. I have never used ANY other software
that has as many quirky little printing bugs.

I think that they should consider using printer configurations similar to
(ssshhh...whisper) autocad. Don't get me wrong. When I first started using
A-CAD, I hated the printer thingy. But, it really does make sense. You
create printer configs for your different printers. Then, just by selecting
a different printer config, you can instantly go FROM: Printer "A", D-size,
scaled 100%, color; TO: Printer "B", B-Size, scaled to fit, BW. And you
would be able to attach one of these printer configs to your templates as a
default for that document, but easily change it if needed with one simple
printer config selection box.

I also like the "previous print" selection the AutoCAD has. It will print
the current document with the last print settings that you actually printed
(from say a previous document).

 

I had the same problem with the page setup. I also had the problem
where if I created a PDF file the next time I printed it would print to
the bluebeam printer. My work around was to create a macro that sets
the orientation, printer & scale and I use that to print my drawings.