1. Autocad Plotter Drivers Download
2. Autocad Plotter Drivers
3. Autocad Plotter Driver Not Found
4. Autocad Plotter Drivers Windows 10
5. Autocad Plotter Drivers Online

'Printing in color from Windows is a complex ballet
of application software, the printer driver, and even the video driver.'
- PC Magazine

CAD & Prints

Printing from CAD applications under Windows, is a complex, non-stop and exhausting ballet;
to make everything going correctly you need a total compatibility among the components the Workstation, continuously running after each other: CAD Program and its last version, Operative Syistem and its version, plotter/printer model and its firmware; each one must be compatible to the others.
These compatibilities are guaranteed by the DRIVER.

Hi, We recently brought a new higher spec cad workstation which is running windows 10 (64 bit) with autocad LT 2018, this replaced a previous pc which also ran windows 10 (64 bit) with autocad LT 2018. We have a HP designjet 500 plotter which worked perfectly when printing from the old pc but when i. Hi, New to the group. Our office is currently using Autocad 2006 with Windows XP. We would like to purchase a pen plotter (thinking about an HP7475A) to plot presentation drawings on mylar or vellum. In reading through previous posts it looks like there are drivers available (Roland DXY980 plotte. Windows driver + mac ppds. Download app › user guide › tutorial video › autocad driver. Download app › user guide › tutorial video › accounting center. Download app › user guide › tutorial video › cost center. Download app › user guide › tutorial video › printer status. Download app › user guide › tutorial video. Use this driver to print from Acrobat or any other windows based application (other than Autocad of course!) 2. In Autocad go into options, and then plotter setup. Follow the wizard to create a new plotter in autocad based on the HP Designjet 750c, but as a destination select the IP for the plotter with a ‘problem’.

In this document

• Which is the difference between printer and plotter?
  • what is a .PLT file
• Modern plotters: Large Format Printers
  • the HP 500 Design Jet: a normal Printer
• HPGL: a Standard Language
  • HPGL, HPGL-2
  • which difference between them?
  • HP-RTL: practically a standard
  • PCL-5 (and higher)
• Windows and HPGL/HPGL-2 Protocol
  • Autodesk: reasons for not using the Windows driver
• Compatibilities
  • a lot of times this is a bit hazardous declaration
• CAD and small Desk Printers
  • margins - centering
  • good prints from all Programs, not from CAD
  • colors and fonts are not corresponding on paper
• Windows and long plots
  • the plots cannot exceed cm 327
• What is a driver?
  • why do we need them? theyr develop
• How may you get these Drivers?
  • get your driver

Which is the difference between printer and plotter?
First of all let's say that it is not important how the Producer named your device, if Printer or Plotter.
It has no importance if used technology for printing is by pen, ink-jet, laser or something else.
It has no importance how it is connected - serial port (COM), parallel (LPT), USB or through net.
The important is the way the Applications send data to print.

CAD programs generally have two ways for sending data to the device: PRINT and PLOT.
To “expert” users, PRINT is a raster output and PLOT a vectorial output.
Let's try an exemple:
Just take a normal straight line we want to plot on a sheet of paper.
To draw that line a CAD program commands (PLOT) to a mobile tool-pen, drill, soldering gun, engraver, etc. from an XY point to an other XY point - a simple displacement: this is a vector.

Because of this peculiar language, the vector generated a specific device able to execute such kind of orders: the plotter (with a pen or other similar tools).
To print that line, Windows generates - memorizing on computer - an image riproducing the whole sheet of paper, dot by dot, both black and white, specifying for each of them XY position, thickness and if it is black or white (or other color), then it sends it - PRINT - to the device: an enormous file (the weight which is the cause of frequently system crashes or incomplete plots and very low transmission of data to the device.

Both systems have pros and cons. To most of CAD users - and most of times - it's much better the vectorial system, PLOT (files .plt). Owing to the enormous difference in dimension and weight of files.
Evidently, dependly on the command PLOT or PRINT, you need the device able to understand the order that you will send to it.

What is a .plt file?
A .plt file is a format of file necessary to print on a prefixed printer (plotter), whether connected to the PC which has been generated from, or in other place: e.g. a Copy Centre.
This format reduces the dimension of the file to few kilobytes, rendering it even suited for e-mail.
You need to install on your PC the specific driver for the plotter that will print it, using the FILE port and the option “Plot to File.

Modern plotters=Large FormatPrinters
Modern inkjet plotters are really Large Format Printers, as HP calls them: Designjet printers, not Designjet plotters. But they work under HPGL protocol, the standard language for CAD programs.

TheHP500Designjet Printer: slow plot generation.
Born as a normal printer with PCL 3 language (PCL 5 and higher are HPGL-2 compatible, instead), to work in CAD needs an optional HPGL card; this is already installed on all other models.
Without this card you'll practically generate, load and print an A0 size in PDF!!
If we think the time we need, very often, for few A4 PDF pages...
Slow plot generation, output data size up to ~10x larger than drawing size, incomplete plot; system crash or a need of more memory, Print Server or Buffer.
To say the truth, this may happen even with an HPGL equipped device; there are many reasons: Autocad itself that creates enormous files, the System Operative version, an old driver not updated, Windows itself.
It's possible to get rid of these inconveniences providing with a more powerful, up-to-date driver - a Third Party Product that we can supply - even suggested by HP, Autodesk and many Others.
You may forget all these problems by installing a good driver and cut down - 50/70% - the weight of files and time for printing.

up

HPGL: a Standard Language
Every plotter has its own protocol (language) to comunicate with CAD programs:

PCI for Calcomp, Summagraphic;
BGL for Benson-Océ;
GPGL for Graphtec;
DM-PL for Houston;
HPGL for Hewlett-Packard;
MH-GL for Mutoh;
RD-RTL, CAMM-GL for Roland
SRL for Selex
ENCAD RTL for earlier ENCAD
and others.

In the course of the years, for CAD programs, the HPGL protocol rapidly imposed itself as a standard, leaving the place to the following HPGL-2, with more performances.
Just like first MS-DOS and the following Windows.
All plotter manufacturers, pointing to a larger market, joined it to theyr own protocol.
Or as Encad, Numonics, Neolt, Regma, Selex, Ioline and many others did in following years, installed the only HPGL - with some little adaptations - grown by this time as the standard de facto: however an endless number of dialects.

HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Grafic Language)
The HPGL plotter driver which is distributed with Windows 95/98/Me wasn't written by Microsoft or Hewlett Packard.
It was originally developed by a Company in Texas for an earlier version of Windows, and was only designed in the first place to work with one particular application, with an HP A0 plotter - single sheet.

HPGL-2
Hewlett-Packard successively developed HPGL-2, a high performance protocol; but it is his own, all the others are emulators (dialects). Many dialects, since each Manifacturer joins such protocol the firmware of every his device.

Which difference between them?
Basically, HPGL is a language for pen plotters: transmits a pen number to the plotter, the corrisponding pen is taken from the carrousel; the thickness of the pen draws the thickness of the line on the paper.
To produce a wanted different thickness, the user must set it on the PLOTTER.
HPGL files are also very large and, after being imported, result in a profusion of polylines or individual elements which can only be reduced to normal proportions again by specific optimization.

HPGL-2 transmits to the plotter all informations for colours and thickness: only the plotters with HPGL-2 protocoll can understand these istructions; the thickness of the lines are definited by the CAD program.
By HPGL-2 you can also get a long plot, longer than cm 111,8 - A0 size - normally cm 160 and much longer on roll feed plotter; it is also able to offer considerably better graphics capabilities.
Performances and more advanced instructions in this protocol allow fast transmission of data to the device and fastest plot generation returns CPU to the application quicker.
If you convert files HPGL-2 in HPGL, you'll lose all these capabilities.
Every time you make a plotter working in emulation of an other model, you make it work with capabilities of this last one

Some modern ink-jet plotters, missing a good driver, are even forced to work as an old pen plotter*:

Autocad Plotter Drivers Download

From ENCAD, technical:support pages

• I have an early model NovaJet 3 and need drivers to operate the machine under Windows XP Professional. I can't find any on your driver download page.
  'ENCAD is not developing a Windows XP driver for the early model ENCADs (NovaJetII, NovaJet II, NovaJet III and the CADJET).
  Install an HP-GL, HP-GL/2 (if available), *HP 7475, HP 7550, HP 758X, or HP 759X, and set the emulation on the early model ENCAD to match the driver that you installed'.
  
• Does ENCAD have a Windows 2000 driver for the NovaCut series'

'ENCAD doesnot have a driver labeled as Windows 2000. You can use the Windows NT 4.0 driver for Windows 2000 and it seems to work well'.

Therefore, every time that, in order to print, you set a modern inkjet or laser plotter in emulation of an old one, you make it work with features and limits of a primordial machine.

from the Official site ENCAD.com

• '.. going to set up the plotter, the display says that the sheet is not supported ..or, with a right format - type ' 914*1700 - it only prints up to the A0'

HP-RTL: practically a standard
Mixed protocol raster/vectorial that HP developed for his 'inkjet large format printers'.
It is already the standard for many Producers and also here with many dialects.
The HP DesignJet Windows drivers don't provide an interface for controling colors and line widths, or for optimising output for vector mode applications: and very heavy as well.

PCL-5 (and higher)
Hewlett-Packard Page Control Language.The protocol PCL-5 is the standard for many modern HP laserjet and HP compatible printers.
Developed since 15 years is a more economic, simple and quick alternative to Postscript.
It is normally used on laser and inkjet desk printers.
PCL-5 allows the use of HPGLfiles on these peripherals, which might be used when the plotter is missing or for quick prints in small size (A4 e A3); or print preview.

Even inferior to Postscript and to its descendant PDF, it is used in almost all printers in the world: more than 70 milions installed.

The reason is that the overwhelming majority of documents doesn't need the potency of a Postscript.

WINDOWS and HPGL/HPGL-2 Protocol
Microsoft doesn’t include support for HP-GL/2 devices with Windows 95/98/Me, but does provide an HP-GL/2 driver with Windows NT4/2000/XP/VISTA, but gives a lot of errors and malfunctions, in addition to output data size up to ~10x larger than drawing size

WinLINE makes even pen plotters work efficiently with popular Windows programs by translating the printed page into efficient vector graphics statements that pen plotters can understand.

From an Autodesk Thecnical Support page:
'Because the Microsoft Windows driver has several limitations......; the HPGL-2 driver that is installed with Windows NT4/2000 and XP, is a Micorosoft version; does not support custom sizes and cannot be used to create long plots.
There are several reasons for not using the Windows driver provided by Microsoft, these include:

• General Protection failure
• Out of paper pen movements
• Incorrect lines style and line width
• Incomplete plots
• Low resolutions affecting curve smoothness
• Incorrect text sizing, positioning, and/or rotation
• drawing does not fit on the sheet
• Spurious lines crossing the drawing and others more'.

Windows is a raster language: a grid of dots
For this reason Windows doesn't transmits the simple order to pick up a pen and move it on XY axis, drawing a line on the paper but it reproduces all the image on his grid of dots: to make that line it puts thousands of dots one beside the other, from the beginning to the end, giving the idea of a line: they are an infinity of graphic entities, each one with its instructions for XY position, color and thickness: cause of the heaviness of files, even if they are few lines or few polygons, needing long time for printing, incomplete plots, system crash.

Compatibilities
All Producers declare theyr product compatible to...
A lot of times this is a bit hazardous declaration

from a CAD discussion Forum:
'I have just installed Autocad 2005 and with 630 ENCAD plotter can not print formats above A0; I premise that I downloaded the specific DRIVER

All Forums are full of messages like this one here above/windows-7-ultimate-64-bit-iso-download-get-into-pc.html.

CAD and small Desk Printers
margins - centering - fonts - colors
(the following remarks are the same for plotters too)
Very often, with no apparent reason, you may obtain different, contrastingresults;
Causes of this usually are:

• the same CAD Program version sending files to different printer models;
• different versions of CAD program sending files to the same printers;
• the same CAD program version, the same printer model but different Windows version.

We read - PC PROFESSIONAL Magazine - CANON giving an answer to a customer that was complaining about the lack of an XP driver for his printer:
'Every producer provides his product with a driver for most popular Operative Systems, the moment of first issue giving all informations about it.
.......Updating Windows 2000 to Windows XP, for instance, Microsoft modified substantially instructions for dyalog between O.S.s, drivers and printing peripherals..'

We have good prints from all Programs, not from CAD
Why we usually have good prints from programs such Word, Excell, Corel Draw, Paint etc. whilst it's not like that printing from CAD?
As told before, the CAD language creates a vector, a .plt file, for the standard plotter protocoll HPGL: almost all desk Printers do not have HPGL protocol.
A table Printer doesn't act, then, like a plotter being its logic and mechanics not generated for this: therefore it is not able to correctly understand the order coming from a CAD, and prints if and what it interprets.
And each Printer model executes the work according to its firmware version.
Some may print correctly, without any error: they have full compatibility between the firmware, the Program version, the Operative System version: it's a lucky coincidence.

Margins & Centering
The CAD (vectorial language), sends in succession instructions to the plotter and develops the drawing starting from the lower left of the page. Windows is a raster language and creates the full page, reproducing the image on its grid of dots. The origin of this page is the center of it; this is the reason why we find so many problems in getting correct margins.

Roll feed Printers - Epson and others
why on these printers, Epson 1520 & 3000, even if they declare a 5/6 meters long plotting they stop at cm 118?
The reason of a maximum lenght at 1118 is because the printer, receiving CAD instruction (vectors), starts automatically Epson Plot (no more supported by Epson), an emulator of primordial HPGL A0 plotter: and the A0 size is mm1118.
This protocol is alsomissing the interface for controlling line widths: a vector has not a width.

Fonts do not match
fonts on display are not corresponding to those on paper

Reasons are different :

• A small difference is normal: the characters are adapted to the grid of pixels on the monitor and the print resolution is different.
• Most CAD programs do not know the peripheral (do not have the specific driver).
• Many Fonts are described in the logic of the printer/plotter; the definition may be different:
  for example, on HP Fonts are much smaller than those on Roland plotter.
  A big difference, already visible on the layout, may result from the reduction in scale for printing. The size of the texts is played according to set: 3 mm set on the draft will be 3 mm on paper.
• Some CAD programs do not give the possibility to set the height of the character in the design other than in print.
• Some CAD programs have many more problems in generating correctly True Type Fonts

Colors - CMYK vs RGB
colors on display are not corresponding to those on paper

Short for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-BlacK, and pronounced as separate letters, CMYK is a color model in which all colors are described as a mixture of these four process colors. CMYK is the standard color model used in offset printing for full-color documents. Because such printing uses inks of these four basic colors, it is often called four-color printing.

In contrast, display devices generally use a different color model called RGB, which stands for Red-Green-Blue. One of the most difficult aspects of desktop publishing in color is color matching - properly converting the RGB colors into CMYK colors so that what gets printed looks the same as what appears on the monitor. A very good driver may reduce this effect.

'Printing in color from Windows is a complex ballet
of application software, the printer driver, and even the video driver.'
- PC Magazine

CAD & Prints

Printing from CAD applications under Windows, is a complex, non-stop and exhausting ballet;
to make everything going correctly you need a total compatibility among the components the Workstation, continuously running after each other: CAD Program and its last version, Operative Syistem and its version, plotter/printer model and its firmware; each one must be compatible to the others.
These compatibilities are guaranteed by the DRIVER.

In this document

• Which is the difference between printer and plotter?
  • what is a .PLT file
• Modern plotters: Large Format Printers
  • the HP 500 Design Jet: a normal Printer
• HPGL: a Standard Language
  • HPGL, HPGL-2
  • which difference between them?
  • HP-RTL: practically a standard
  • PCL-5 (and higher)
• Windows and HPGL/HPGL-2 Protocol
  • Autodesk: reasons for not using the Windows driver
• Compatibilities
  • a lot of times this is a bit hazardous declaration
• CAD and small Desk Printers
  • margins - centering
  • good prints from all Programs, not from CAD
  • colors and fonts are not corresponding on paper
• Windows and long plots
  • the plots cannot exceed cm 327
• What is a driver?
  • why do we need them? theyr develop
• How may you get these Drivers?
  • get your driver

Which is the difference between printer and plotter?
First of all let's say that it is not important how the Producer named your device, if Printer or Plotter.
It has no importance if used technology for printing is by pen, ink-jet, laser or something else.
It has no importance how it is connected - serial port (COM), parallel (LPT), USB or through net.
The important is the way the Applications send data to print.

CAD programs generally have two ways for sending data to the device: PRINT and PLOT.
To “expert” users, PRINT is a raster output and PLOT a vectorial output.
Let's try an exemple:
Just take a normal straight line we want to plot on a sheet of paper.
To draw that line a CAD program commands (PLOT) to a mobile tool-pen, drill, soldering gun, engraver, etc. from an XY point to an other XY point - a simple displacement: this is a vector.

Autocad Plotter Drivers

Because of this peculiar language, the vector generated a specific device able to execute such kind of orders: the plotter (with a pen or other similar tools).
To print that line, Windows generates - memorizing on computer - an image riproducing the whole sheet of paper, dot by dot, both black and white, specifying for each of them XY position, thickness and if it is black or white (or other color), then it sends it - PRINT - to the device: an enormous file (the weight which is the cause of frequently system crashes or incomplete plots and very low transmission of data to the device.

Both systems have pros and cons. To most of CAD users - and most of times - it's much better the vectorial system, PLOT (files .plt). Owing to the enormous difference in dimension and weight of files.
Evidently, dependly on the command PLOT or PRINT, you need the device able to understand the order that you will send to it.

What is a .plt file?
A .plt file is a format of file necessary to print on a prefixed printer (plotter), whether connected to the PC which has been generated from, or in other place: e.g. a Copy Centre.
This format reduces the dimension of the file to few kilobytes, rendering it even suited for e-mail.
You need to install on your PC the specific driver for the plotter that will print it, using the FILE port and the option “Plot to File.

Modern plotters=Large FormatPrinters
Modern inkjet plotters are really Large Format Printers, as HP calls them: Designjet printers, not Designjet plotters. But they work under HPGL protocol, the standard language for CAD programs.

TheHP500Designjet Printer: slow plot generation.
Born as a normal printer with PCL 3 language (PCL 5 and higher are HPGL-2 compatible, instead), to work in CAD needs an optional HPGL card; this is already installed on all other models.
Without this card you'll practically generate, load and print an A0 size in PDF!!
If we think the time we need, very often, for few A4 PDF pages...
Slow plot generation, output data size up to ~10x larger than drawing size, incomplete plot; system crash or a need of more memory, Print Server or Buffer.
To say the truth, this may happen even with an HPGL equipped device; there are many reasons: Autocad itself that creates enormous files, the System Operative version, an old driver not updated, Windows itself.
It's possible to get rid of these inconveniences providing with a more powerful, up-to-date driver - a Third Party Product that we can supply - even suggested by HP, Autodesk and many Others.
You may forget all these problems by installing a good driver and cut down - 50/70% - the weight of files and time for printing.

up

HPGL: a Standard Language
Every plotter has its own protocol (language) to comunicate with CAD programs:

PCI for Calcomp, Summagraphic;
BGL for Benson-Océ;
GPGL for Graphtec;
DM-PL for Houston;
HPGL for Hewlett-Packard;
MH-GL for Mutoh;
RD-RTL, CAMM-GL for Roland
SRL for Selex
ENCAD RTL for earlier ENCAD
and others.

In the course of the years, for CAD programs, the HPGL protocol rapidly imposed itself as a standard, leaving the place to the following HPGL-2, with more performances.
Just like first MS-DOS and the following Windows.
All plotter manufacturers, pointing to a larger market, joined it to theyr own protocol.
Or as Encad, Numonics, Neolt, Regma, Selex, Ioline and many others did in following years, installed the only HPGL - with some little adaptations - grown by this time as the standard de facto: however an endless number of dialects.

HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Grafic Language)
The HPGL plotter driver which is distributed with Windows 95/98/Me wasn't written by Microsoft or Hewlett Packard.
It was originally developed by a Company in Texas for an earlier version of Windows, and was only designed in the first place to work with one particular application, with an HP A0 plotter - single sheet.

HPGL-2
Hewlett-Packard successively developed HPGL-2, a high performance protocol; but it is his own, all the others are emulators (dialects). Many dialects, since each Manifacturer joins such protocol the firmware of every his device.

Which difference between them?
Basically, HPGL is a language for pen plotters: transmits a pen number to the plotter, the corrisponding pen is taken from the carrousel; the thickness of the pen draws the thickness of the line on the paper.
To produce a wanted different thickness, the user must set it on the PLOTTER.
HPGL files are also very large and, after being imported, result in a profusion of polylines or individual elements which can only be reduced to normal proportions again by specific optimization.

HPGL-2 transmits to the plotter all informations for colours and thickness: only the plotters with HPGL-2 protocoll can understand these istructions; the thickness of the lines are definited by the CAD program.
By HPGL-2 you can also get a long plot, longer than cm 111,8 - A0 size - normally cm 160 and much longer on roll feed plotter; it is also able to offer considerably better graphics capabilities.
Performances and more advanced instructions in this protocol allow fast transmission of data to the device and fastest plot generation returns CPU to the application quicker.
If you convert files HPGL-2 in HPGL, you'll lose all these capabilities.
Every time you make a plotter working in emulation of an other model, you make it work with capabilities of this last one

Some modern ink-jet plotters, missing a good driver, are even forced to work as an old pen plotter*:

From ENCAD, technical:support pages

• I have an early model NovaJet 3 and need drivers to operate the machine under Windows XP Professional. I can't find any on your driver download page.
  'ENCAD is not developing a Windows XP driver for the early model ENCADs (NovaJetII, NovaJet II, NovaJet III and the CADJET).
  Install an HP-GL, HP-GL/2 (if available), *HP 7475, HP 7550, HP 758X, or HP 759X, and set the emulation on the early model ENCAD to match the driver that you installed'.
  
• Does ENCAD have a Windows 2000 driver for the NovaCut series'

'ENCAD doesnot have a driver labeled as Windows 2000. You can use the Windows NT 4.0 driver for Windows 2000 and it seems to work well'.

Therefore, every time that, in order to print, you set a modern inkjet or laser plotter in emulation of an old one, you make it work with features and limits of a primordial machine.

from the Official site ENCAD.com

• '.. going to set up the plotter, the display says that the sheet is not supported ..or, with a right format - type ' 914*1700 - it only prints up to the A0'

HP-RTL: practically a standard
Mixed protocol raster/vectorial that HP developed for his 'inkjet large format printers'.
It is already the standard for many Producers and also here with many dialects.
The HP DesignJet Windows drivers don't provide an interface for controling colors and line widths, or for optimising output for vector mode applications: and very heavy as well.

Autocad Plotter Driver Not Found

PCL-5 (and higher)
Hewlett-Packard Page Control Language.The protocol PCL-5 is the standard for many modern HP laserjet and HP compatible printers.
Developed since 15 years is a more economic, simple and quick alternative to Postscript.
It is normally used on laser and inkjet desk printers.
PCL-5 allows the use of HPGLfiles on these peripherals, which might be used when the plotter is missing or for quick prints in small size (A4 e A3); or print preview.

Even inferior to Postscript and to its descendant PDF, it is used in almost all printers in the world: more than 70 milions installed.

The reason is that the overwhelming majority of documents doesn't need the potency of a Postscript.Adobe after effects cc 2019 16.1.3 dmg mac.

Autocad Plotter Drivers Windows 10

WINDOWS and HPGL/HPGL-2 Protocol
Microsoft doesn’t include support for HP-GL/2 devices with Windows 95/98/Me, but does provide an HP-GL/2 driver with Windows NT4/2000/XP/VISTA, but gives a lot of errors and malfunctions, in addition to output data size up to ~10x larger than drawing size

WinLINE makes even pen plotters work efficiently with popular Windows programs by translating the printed page into efficient vector graphics statements that pen plotters can understand.

From an Autodesk Thecnical Support page:
'Because the Microsoft Windows driver has several limitations......; the HPGL-2 driver that is installed with Windows NT4/2000 and XP, is a Micorosoft version; does not support custom sizes and cannot be used to create long plots.
There are several reasons for not using the Windows driver provided by Microsoft, these include:

• General Protection failure
• Out of paper pen movements
• Incorrect lines style and line width
• Incomplete plots
• Low resolutions affecting curve smoothness
• Incorrect text sizing, positioning, and/or rotation
• drawing does not fit on the sheet
• Spurious lines crossing the drawing and others more'.

Windows is a raster language: a grid of dots
For this reason Windows doesn't transmits the simple order to pick up a pen and move it on XY axis, drawing a line on the paper but it reproduces all the image on his grid of dots: to make that line it puts thousands of dots one beside the other, from the beginning to the end, giving the idea of a line: they are an infinity of graphic entities, each one with its instructions for XY position, color and thickness: cause of the heaviness of files, even if they are few lines or few polygons, needing long time for printing, incomplete plots, system crash.

Compatibilities
All Producers declare theyr product compatible to...
A lot of times this is a bit hazardous declaration

from a CAD discussion Forum:
'I have just installed Autocad 2005 and with 630 ENCAD plotter can not print formats above A0; I premise that I downloaded the specific DRIVER

All Forums are full of messages like this one here above

CAD and small Desk Printers
margins - centering - fonts - colors
(the following remarks are the same for plotters too)
Very often, with no apparent reason, you may obtain different, contrastingresults;
Causes of this usually are:

• the same CAD Program version sending files to different printer models;
• different versions of CAD program sending files to the same printers;
• the same CAD program version, the same printer model but different Windows version.

We read - PC PROFESSIONAL Magazine - CANON giving an answer to a customer that was complaining about the lack of an XP driver for his printer:
'Every producer provides his product with a driver for most popular Operative Systems, the moment of first issue giving all informations about it.
.......Updating Windows 2000 to Windows XP, for instance, Microsoft modified substantially instructions for dyalog between O.S.s, drivers and printing peripherals..'

We have good prints from all Programs, not from CAD
Why we usually have good prints from programs such Word, Excell, Corel Draw, Paint etc. whilst it's not like that printing from CAD?
As told before, the CAD language creates a vector, a .plt file, for the standard plotter protocoll HPGL: almost all desk Printers do not have HPGL protocol.
A table Printer doesn't act, then, like a plotter being its logic and mechanics not generated for this: therefore it is not able to correctly understand the order coming from a CAD, and prints if and what it interprets.
And each Printer model executes the work according to its firmware version.
Some may print correctly, without any error: they have full compatibility between the firmware, the Program version, the Operative System version: it's a lucky coincidence.

Margins & Centering
The CAD (vectorial language), sends in succession instructions to the plotter and develops the drawing starting from the lower left of the page. Windows is a raster language and creates the full page, reproducing the image on its grid of dots. The origin of this page is the center of it; this is the reason why we find so many problems in getting correct margins.

Roll feed Printers - Epson and others
why on these printers, Epson 1520 & 3000, even if they declare a 5/6 meters long plotting they stop at cm 118?
The reason of a maximum lenght at 1118 is because the printer, receiving CAD instruction (vectors), starts automatically Epson Plot (no more supported by Epson), an emulator of primordial HPGL A0 plotter: and the A0 size is mm1118.
This protocol is alsomissing the interface for controlling line widths: a vector has not a width.

Fonts do not match
fonts on display are not corresponding to those on paper

Reasons are different :

• A small difference is normal: the characters are adapted to the grid of pixels on the monitor and the print resolution is different.
• Most CAD programs do not know the peripheral (do not have the specific driver).
• Many Fonts are described in the logic of the printer/plotter; the definition may be different:
  for example, on HP Fonts are much smaller than those on Roland plotter.
  A big difference, already visible on the layout, may result from the reduction in scale for printing. The size of the texts is played according to set: 3 mm set on the draft will be 3 mm on paper.
• Some CAD programs do not give the possibility to set the height of the character in the design other than in print.
• Some CAD programs have many more problems in generating correctly True Type Fonts

Colors - CMYK vs RGB
colors on display are not corresponding to those on paper

Short for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-BlacK, and pronounced as separate letters, CMYK is a color model in which all colors are described as a mixture of these four process colors. CMYK is the standard color model used in offset printing for full-color documents. Because such printing uses inks of these four basic colors, it is often called four-color printing.

Autocad Plotter Drivers Online

In contrast, display devices generally use a different color model called RGB, which stands for Red-Green-Blue. One of the most difficult aspects of desktop publishing in color is color matching - properly converting the RGB colors into CMYK colors so that what gets printed looks the same as what appears on the monitor. A very good driver may reduce this effect.