Setting up domestic printer for plotting with Cadence

Hi all!

I would like to know if there is some way of tweaking the Cadence
configuration in order to plot to a simple HP Laserjet 1020 printer. I
am using CentOS 3 and the printer works fine with all other
applications (i.e., I have already managed to install it and create a
working print queue). I remember I once managed to plot from Cadence
to a HP Laserjet 4100 that used Jetdirect (and this is why I believe
it is indeed possible to print from Cadence to a PCL printer), but it
was years ago and I am clueless about how to do this for a non-
networked, domestic printer.

So far I have tried Cadence's "plotconfig" utility, but all the
drivers listed there seem to be for HP-GL plotters, and I cannot find
a way of choosing my existing queue there. Any ideas?

Any help is greatly appreciated! ...even just comments on the
feasibility of doing this

Greetings,

Jorge.

 

I would like to know if there is some way of tweaking the Cadence

Totally possible. I never used plotconfig, but edit the ~/.cdsplotinit
file directly. Here's an exemple picked from mine, I guess the different
entries are rather self-explaning :

lj329rv|HP LaserJet 4200DTN:\
:spool=lpr -P lj329rv: \
:manufacturer=Adobe: \
:type=postscript2: \
:resolution#600: \
:maximumPages#1: \
aperSize="A4" 4960 7016: \


Hope this helps,

Stéphane

 

Thanks so much for your kind reply, Stéphane (sorry for the delay in
answering, been out of work the past days!). I used your settings and
it worked fine, tough I found that changing the type to "postscript1"
yielded better results (don't know why but with "postscript2" the
plots were printed with too light tones). So here are the final
settings I used in my .cdsplotinit:

HP_LaserJet_1020 | HP LaserJet 1020:\
:spool=lpr -P HP_LaserJet_1020: \
:query=lpstat HP_LaserJet_1020: \
:manufacturer=Adobe: \
:type=postscript1: \
:resolution#600: \
:maximumPages#1: \
aperSize="A4" 4960 7016: \

Just one more question... The aforementioned sizes for A4 paper always
result in plots a little off-paper, and for each schematic I always
have to manually tweak the "Scale" parameter in the Virtuoso plot
dialog windows in order to make them fit the A4 sheet. Is there any
way of defining margins (in the .cdsplotinit or wherever) in order to
avoid the off-paper plotting and at the same time benefiting from the
scaling that Virtuoso calculates automatically (i.e., without having
to touch the "Scale" parameter each time)? I tried by just changing
the paper size in the .cdsplotinit but this doesn't solve the problem,
the plots still come off-paper (at least on the Y-axis) and one has to
play with the "Offset" value to bring the plots in-paper. Likewise,
the "Center Plot" option in the plot dialog windows seems to only
center the design on the X-axis, resulting in off-paper plotting on
the Y-axis anyways.

....Any ideas on how to overcome this? Thanks once again for your time
and help!

Regards,

Jorge.

 

The specs you are supplying for A4 paper will use the entire sheet:

4960/600 = 8.266666... inches
7016/600 = 11.693333... inches

I'm not sure what the margin size is on your printer, but you could try taking
about a half an inch (300 dots) off of each dimension and see if that works:

aperSize="A4" 4660 6716:

-Pete Zakel
()

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the
best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't
last out the year."
-The editor in charge of business books
for Prentice Hall, 1957

 

Thanks so much for your reply, Pete. Finally I solved the problem
using a slightly different syntax for the paperSize line, which allows
to define X and Y-axis offsets:

aperSize="[paper_size_name]" x-size y-size (x-offset y-offset)

The following values work just fine for A4 sheets on the LaserJet 1020
(leaving aprox. 7mm margins on each side):

aperSize="A4_with_margins" 7410 6766 150 150

Once again thanks for your help!

Regards,

Jorge.