Printing from W7 through an XP printer

[jdavis]

I want to preface this by saying I'm completely ignorant of ProE, and the responsibilities of our Pro environment have somehow fallen on me.

We use ProE WF4 M100 and Intralink 3.4 M070. Our recently purchased machines are Windows 7 based, but there is no driver available for Windows 7 that works with our XEROX 8830 plotter.

On XP, this is the plotter configuration we use, and it works:
allow_file_naming YES
button_name 8830
button_help 8830
create_separate_files NO
delete_after_plotting YES
interface_quality 0
paper_size_allowed A B C D
plot_access create
plot_drawing_format YES
plot_label NO
plot_names NO
plot_roll_media YES
plot_scale plot .97 default
plot_segmented NO
plotter_handshake software
plotter XEROX8830

After some light reading on plotter configuration files, I thought I'd be able to make a .pcf on a W7 machine that prints through a shared plotter on an XP machine. This is what I came up with:

allow_file_naming yes<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">button_name 8830<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">button_help 8830<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">create_separate_files no<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">delete_after_plotting yes<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">interface_quality 0<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">paper_size_allowed a b c d<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plot_access create<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plot_drawing_format yes<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plot_label no<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plot_names no<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plot_roll_media yes<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plot_scale plot .9 default<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plot_segmented no<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plotter_handshake software<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plotter windows_print_manager \\server\xes8830

This almost works, but not quite. The print manager pops up, the user still has to select the shared printer on \\server, and the printing results arent consistent. The users tell me that if they first zoom all, and then zoom-box then it prints fine; however, they want the ease of use of just pushing a button like they did on XP.

Maybe this can't be done? I just want to send plot jobs from W7 to XP, and print from some XP-based print server.

Before I continue just blindly tweaking and plotting for the rest of my Monday, I was curious if someone had already achieved a similar result? Again, I'll stress that I'm very ignorant of most Pro things, and my knowledge primarily comes from Google.

I appreciate any time and help.

 

[dgs]

We had thought that there was no Win7 64 driver for our HP 1055 plotter, but found that it was available right in the Windows7 database. It wasn't listed at first, but if we hit the 'update' button on the screen where you choose the printer Windows went to the web for an updated list and it was there.

As far as zoom or not, there is a PCF option for that. Set 'plot_with_panzoom' to yes to plot only what's on screen. Set to no you get a full plot, regardless of zoom level.

You might check the Pro/E help, somewhere there's got to be a section on PCF files. The search function is poor, however, so finding it may be a challenge.

Good luck!

 

[jdavis]

I'll check again. I contacted Xerox awhile back, and they assured me that there's no driver and that they'd love to sell us a newer plotter.

Finding documentation for the .pcf files has been fairly easy, but find information on sending ProE plot files to another machine to be processed for plotting has been another issue.

Do you know if that task, independent of this scenario, is possible?

Thanks for your help, dgs.

 

[dgs]

HP shows no driver for Windows7 for ours as well. Well, at least for the 64 bit version. I was surprised to find it bundled within windows.

Is your plotter connected directly to the network or is it connected to another server/PC on the network?

There is a way to send the plot file straight to the plotter and not have to go through the windows print manager. It can be truly a 1 click solution., if you set up a mapkey to execute the plot command. If not, it will at least eliminate the Windows print dialog step. You can set up dedicated PCF files for each plot size as well as zoom based and full plot PCFs. We have probably a dozen here.

Our plotter is connected direct to the network. Here's the line from our PDFs

<div style="margin-left: 40px;">plotter_command lpr -S <plotter.ip.address> -P <plotter.ip.address>
</div>
In Windows7, however, LPR plotting is turned off by default. Go to "Control Panel/Programs and Features/Turn Windows features on or off" and you'll find the LPR setting under printing options. If you're using 64 bit Windows with 32 bit Pro/E, you'll also need to copy lpr.exe, lprhelp.dll, and lprmonui.dll from the System32 folder to the sysWOW64 folder. You'll need admin permissions to do that. It's possible that's necessary regardless, I don't know.

Here's the line we used when our plotter was connected to another server:

<div style="margin-left: 40px;">plotter_command print /d:\\<server_name>\<plotter_name>
</div>
We haven't used that in some time, not sure if it's still right for Windows 7.

 

[jdavis]

I should be able to verify the driver issue today.

Yes, the plotter is connected directly to the network.

Are the above plotter_command lines single lines in a PCF, or are they coupled with other options? I don't think it'd be much problem to have multiple mapkeys (as we only have 4 drawing sizes), if that's the solution that presents itself.

I'm sorry for my need to be spoon-fed this information, but how would I go about creating a mapkey that executes a pcf?

Also, would my pcf be something as simple as this?
paper_size a<br style="font-family: Courier New,Courier,mono;">plotter_command lpr -S <plotter.ip.address> -P <plotter.ip.address>

I really appreciate your help, Doug.

 

[dgs]

You may need the other options in there. Here's the thing - go into Pro/E and open a drawing. Now select the print icon and open the drop down next to where is (probably) says MS Printer Manager.

Select add printer type in the pop up and find your Xerox printer (or a similar model).

Then, add in the plotter_command based on above.

Now, click the configure button and change/set anything you need to in those dialogs.

Notice, at the bottom of the configure dialog is an option to save. Click this and Pro/E will generate a PCF file based on those settings. Save it in the folder that you've defined as your plotter config directory using the config.pro option 'pro_plot_config_dir'. I'd open it with a text editor to double check things, but it should be pretty good. It may be easier to make copies of that PDF, changing the paper_size option for your various sheet sizes.

Every PDF you save in that directory will show up as options in that drop down list you used to add your plotter.

One more thing. I noticed the 'default' option in some places in your PDF above. That option controls whether the user can change this through the configuration dialog. You may not want them changing the pen table file, for example, but allow them to select their sheet size (so you don't have to create and maintain several PCFs). I think by setting 'default' you lock the option so the user cannot change it.

 

[dr_gallup]

Using the "default" option is good for some variables. For instance:

paper_size_allowed Variable default

Lets the page size automatically determine the paper size but the operator can over ride it with anything they want.

 

[jdavis]

I currently have the paper_size_allowed set as:
paper_size_allowed a b c d

Doug, this bit:
plotter_command print /d:\\<server_name>\<plotter_name>

Worked perfectly. If you guys don't mind, when I get a chance, I'll post the pcf contents if you guys wouldn't mind looking it over, but as it currently stands the engineers are happy with the solution.

I tried the other one:
plotter_command lpr -S <plotter.ip.address> -P <plotter.ip.address>

but it was generating some error that was vanishing before I could read it. Was the second half meant to be the port instead of the IP again?


Doug, I tried doing another manual add of the printer, but even after a "Windows Update" at the printer driver list, it still didn't list a Xerox 8830.

Now I'm curious as to how I can have ProE default to this newly created PCF from the print dialog. I imagine there's some config.pro setting that defaults the printer selection?

I really appreciate the help.

 

[dgs]

If the first one worked, I don't think the second one will, but I'm not certain. The first is for printers driven off of a server, the second is for printers directly connected to the network without being driven or tied to a server. I'm not an IT guy, so I may have completely botched that explanation, but that's how I understand it. We had to change to the latter when we got our new plotter.

As far as the IP address, both are the same in my situation. I believe it's the printer's IP. Your error may have to do with the plotter not set up this way or perhaps you don't have the LPR option enabled. Did you check that?

 

[jdavis]

Yes, I installed the LPR components. The plotter is connected directly to the network, but the way I'm currently accessing it is through someone's XP-based machine that has the plotter setup. It's not a print server per se, but rather just a workstation that is sharing the plotter.

I may tinker around with it some tomorrow.

Thank again, Doug.

 

[dgs]

Sounds like LPR is not going to work then, you need to send it to the XP based 'server'.