Blank Sheets on OCE TDS400 on Win 2000 Server

[thussein]

We are running AutoCAD 2002 with no third party software under Windows 2000 on the server. The end users are using windows 2000 or windows xp. Our plotter is Oce' TDS400 without the scanner. When we plot drawings from AutoCAD, sometimes the sheet or sheets start to come out blank, even though the plot preview shows the drawing in the preview window correctly. We are not sure why suddenly we started to get blank sheets. The trigger might be from batch plot, or it might be from half size plots. Once it starts plotting blank sheets, it doesn't stop no matter what the plot settings are. Our fix for this is to turn off the plotter, turn off the controller, turn on the plotter, and then turn on the controller. Once the plotter is connected back to the network, it then plots the drawings that were coming out blank correctly, without us resending them. We are wasting a lot of time and paper this way. And we are charged by the foot for our new plotter. If any one has an idea of what is going on, or has experienced the same problem we would appreciate any input. We put in a service call to our plotter supplier, and they told us it sounds like a software problem. So we don't know if
they can fix this glitch easily or not.

Thanks

[John Schmidt]

Which driver are you using - the Heidi for AutoCAD or the Windows system
driver? We used to use the Windows drivers, but switched to Heidi with
R2005. They're working perfect, whereas the Windows driver is now totally
failing for some reason. I notice OCE has new AutoCAD drivers dated August
2004 at www.oceusa.com - you may want to try those.

John
"thussein" <nospam@address.withheld> wrote in message
news:24564659.1100104029406.JavaMail.jive@jiveforu m1.autodesk.com...

We are running AutoCAD 2002 with no third party software under Windows
2000 on the server. The end users are using windows 2000 or windows xp.

Our plotter is Oce' TDS400 without the scanner. When we plot drawings from
AutoCAD, sometimes the sheet or sheets start to come out blank, even though
the plot preview shows the drawing in the preview window correctly. We are
not sure why suddenly we started to get blank sheets. The trigger might be
from batch plot, or it might be from half size plots. Once it starts
plotting blank sheets, it doesn't stop no matter what the plot settings are.
Our fix for this is to turn off the plotter, turn off the controller, turn
on the plotter, and then turn on the controller. Once the plotter is
connected back to the network, it then plots the drawings that were coming
out blank correctly, without us resending them. We are wasting a lot of
time and paper this way. And we are charged by the foot for our new
plotter. If any one has an idea of what is going on, or has experienced the
same problem we would appreciate any input. We put in a service call to our
plotter supplier, and they told us it sounds like a software problem. So we
don't know if they can fix this glitch easily or not.

Thanks

[thussein]

We got our OCE TDS400 just last month (October 2004) ... and so ... it has the latest driver (1.7, build 4.05.24.1) ... it is installed on a server and a PC3 is created using the "Network Plotter Server" option ... it works perfect most times, but sometimes it does the "blank sheet" thing which has been very frustrating and a waste of time and money ... thanx for your concern ...