Plotting Gradient Fills Takes a loooooong time..

Gradient Fills are great and they look realy nice, but when we plot them out
it takes a really long time on our HP 1050c plotter. On our 11x17 color
laserjet 5500 they plot quickly (using PCL6 driver).

The gradient plan is basically a Colorized Site Plan, with different layers
of fill:
gradient green, up to property line.then gradient greys for asphalt paving
on top of that, then buildings in various gradient colors on top of that and
or gradient greens for grass islands or gradient lighter grays for
sidewalks, etc.

We are running Land Desktop 2005 with and without raster design 2005, on
Windows XP-Service Pack 2. The Print Server is Windows 2000 running the
latest driver for the HP device for 2005 (v4.66) pulled fomr the HP website

Any thoughts?

Thanks
Mark

 

After some further investigation I realized that the printer does not have
an internal hard drive, when I thought it had. Having/not having an internal
hard drive on these devices makes all the difference in the world when it
comes to large prints.

There is a setting that affects how the print is spooled, "in computer" or
"on printer".
These are found in the printing options, advanced tab on the HP optimized
driver.

For larger prints...
The best settings for a Device with a hard drive is "on Printer"
The best settings for a Device without a hard drive is "on Computer"

I set it to On Computer and it printed right out. Granted this setting
really taxes the computer sending the print, but it solved the problem and
it printed it in a reasonable time.

Meamwhile, I have a Internal hard drive and an updated firmware in route...

Thanks for all of your suggestions.

Mark