System Printer message box?

I need to plot a series of drawings from VB but every time I call the plot
routine I get a message box "Windows System Printer..." with OK and Cancel.
The plotter I'm going to use is defined and I call it from VB. How do I get
around this message? My program cant run unattended because I have to hit OK
on every drawing. It appears AutoCAD remembers the plotter last used with
the drawing and it doesn't exist in our location.

thanks
LJB

 

I need to plot a series of drawings from VB but every time I call the plot
routine I get a message box "Windows System Printer..." with OK and Cancel.
The plotter I'm going to use is defined and I call it from VB. How do I get
around this message? My program cant run unattended because I have to hit OK
on every drawing. It appears AutoCAD remembers the plotter last used with
the drawing and it doesn't exist in our location.

thanks
LJB

 

Plotting drawing is alway closely tied with printer setting, especially when
you get drawing with Layout set up in drawing from other office.

To do unattended batch plotting, you must do some pre-processing if the
drawing's Layout/Plot setting is based on printer different from the one you
are going to use:

1. Your program examine Layout/PlotConfiguration in drawing, find matched
settings on available printer, modifiy Layout/PlotConfiguration, then plot,
so that you get basically the same plotting effect as original plot setting
in drawing. You may want to restore original plot settings in drawing if it
is modified.

2. Create new Layout/Plot Configuration based on your plotting need,
regardless what is the Layout/Plot setting in drawing.

 

I think my problem was caused by using layout.RefreshPlotDeviceInfo before I
made any plot device assignment to override the saved info. By moving it
down in my code the problem went away. Thanks for the hint Norm.

LJB

 

I'm having trouble doing some of this. Sometimes AutoCAD 2000 won't let me
set the ConfigName to a valid plotter before I do a RefreshPlotDeviceInfo.
But calling RefreshPlotDeviceInfo when the drawing has an invalid plotter is
exactly what causes the message box to halt the program until I clear it. It
doesn't always happen but did on a dozen or so of the four thousand drawings
I processed today. On the problem drawings trying to set ConfigName first
stops VB with a runtime error something to do with "invalid property
setting".

 

Are you setting CongigName on a newly created PlotConfiguration object or on
an existing one? I'd guess it should be OK with newly created
PlotCOnfiguration object.

 

I've discovered that if I start AutoCAD 2000 from my VB program I need
to manually load the plot dialog on one drawing before I continue. If
I start with a blank drawing, manually open the plot dialog and cancel
the plot dialog then I can resume VB. If I don't do that once at the
start then I can't set the ConfigName in VB code! After having done
this once everything works fine. I can set the ConfigName on all
remaining drawings without a problem. After setting the ConfigName to
a valid plotter I can RefreshPlotDeviceInfo without a problem also.