Continue mapkey outside Creo

[FisnikBehramaj]

Hi.

We have very specific drawingssettings set up in Creo. I have recorded a mapkey for printing different sizes of PDF. Problem is that Creo mapkeys cannot handle the windows printer manager and for now our printings are semi-automatic. How can I handle programs with creo mapkeys outside Creo? 

I use F6 to run the printing steps and end up with following view in "Printer View". Even though I have recorded the mapkey to change from \\nivm374 printer to PDD995 it simply don't work. 

Anyone have a clue how to handle this type of issues? Somehow PTC handles this via File->Save As-> Quick Export.

I have also noted that it is possible to run a OS Script when recording a mapkey but I did not seem to get it to work either. 

Thank you for your time.

Regards

Fisnik

[GabrielZaha]

You need to set the plotter_command option.

Add the following line to your config.pro or to the printer configuration file(.pcf):

plotter_command \\nivm374\2101PRD002

plotter_command print /d:\\nivm374\2101PRD002

This will send the drawing to the 2101PRD002 printer without opening the Printer View window.

To create a PDF file via print command use:

plotter_command <PDF_Generator_Program>

For example

plotter_command ps2pdf

You need to keep in mind that if you add the plotter_command to the config.pro then the command will be executed every time you select the print command.

If you use the plotter configuration file the command will be executed only when you select that particular printer configuration.

[FisnikBehramaj]

Thank you for your answer Gabriel. 

I will try this solution as soon as i return from vacation. 🙂 I will revert if solution works. 

Regards

Fisnik

[FisnikBehramaj]

Hello Gabriel.

I am now back from vacation. 🙂 

I have tried printing the drawing directly to the printer by implementing plotter_command \\nivm374\2101PRD002 directly to the pcf-file. The microsoft printer window still pops up. What might be wrong?

[GabrielZaha]

I'm sorry, I've made a mistake in my previous message.

The correct pcf option is:

plotter_command print /d:\\nivm374\2101PRD002

[FisnikBehramaj]

Hello Gabrial,

Unfortunately it is not working. I think that the problem is that I still juse the MS_PRINT_MGR as a plotter and it opens the windows printing dialog box. Is there any way to call the PDF995 printer instead?

Example:

plotter PDF995

[dnordin]

I'd suggest using just the .pcf files to control printing.

Your "plotter" setting in the .pcf file needs to be one of the defined plotters in Creo Paramtric.

Select the Print (tab) settings (group) to open the Printer Configuration dialog, use the + & down arrow icon to select a printer, from there, select Add Printer Type.  A list of acceptable printers will display.  If your specific printer is not listed, you can select GENERIC_HPGL.

As far as the plotter command in the .pcf file, you can use the following format to print directly to the printer (assuming your using a network printer):

plotter_command windows_print_manager \\servername\printername

Here's an example from one of our .pcf files:

! Printer configuration file for c402g OCE TDS 400 plotter
button_help c402g OCE TDS 400 plotter
button_name c402g
plotter OCE9400
plotter_command windows_print_manager \\servername\IEWS_c402g
pen_table_file J:\Ede\Common_Mcae\creo\parametric\3.0\pnt\ps_thick.pnt
!

One item of note is we found the .pcf filename needs to match the button_name, so in the example above, the .pcf filename should be c402g.pcf.

Regards,

Dan N.

[FisnikBehramaj]

Hi,

First of thank you for your answers, they led me to the right path solving the problem (kind of).

So this is what I did to solve my problem:

plotter POSTSCRIPT
button_name A3PDF
button_help Acrobat PDF File Conversion
delete_after_plotting YES
plot_drawing_format YES default
plot_segmented NO default
plot_roll_media NO default
plot_handshake software default
plot_label NO default
plot_with_panzoom NO default
rotate_plotting NO default
allow_file_naming NO
plot_name NO
interface_quality 3 default
plot_scale PLOT 0.960000
plot_destination file_and_printer default
plotter_command p:\prolib\plotters\ConvertToPDF.bat
pen_table_file P:\prolib\pentable\PDFPrinter.pnt
plot_file_dir U:\CreoPDF
plot_sheets all default
paper_size_allowed A3
paper_size A3
plot_clip NO default
plot_area NO default

The main problem was that I needed a fully automatic mapkey that prints drw's to PDF's and code above prints the drw's to plt's and therefor i had to write a script that converts plt to pdf. I think it is very strange that you have to go thruw so much work just to print some PDFs with mapkeys but this is my solution and it works so far with a minor issue (the lines are a bit blurry, and changing pen-table have no affect. I guess it is the conversion from plt to pdf that makes the lines blurry. 🙂 )

Here is the script for the .bat-file:

@echo off

rem ** Sets the path for GSTool.
set path=P:\gs\gs8.00\bin;P:\gs\gs8.00\lib;P:\gs\gs8.00\fonts;%path%
set GS_LIB=P:\gs\gs8.00\lib

rem ** Get the plot file name and location from the command line.
set INNAME=%1

rem ** Change the .plt (Change to .ps if you are using that extension) to .pdf for the output.
set OUTNAME=%INNAME:.plt=.pdf%

rem ** Start Ghostscript, make sure that "C:\gs\gs8.00" is set in your path.
rem ** For NT this is setup in: Control Panel + System + Enviroment + path.
call P:\gs\gs8.00\lib\ps2pdf14.bat %INNAME% %OUTNAME%

rem ** Delete the original plot file.
del %INNAME%
path

rem ** Move the file to a release directory now.
move %OUTNAME% U:\CreoPDF

So my last issue for now is really trying to understand why the drawings get's a little bit blurry compared to other drawings I have printed in the old way but with same pen-tables... 

[dschenken]

Try attaching a .ps file that is of something simple, like a line or a rectangle. I don't know why Ghostscript would make things blurry, but maybe there is something in the .ps file that is causing it.

[FisnikBehramaj]

Hi DSchenken,

I am not sure if i follow you regarding the ps. When I print the drawing with Postscript it prints it as .plt. After that i convert it to PDF. with a .bat-script. I am not sure why it prints it as .plt and .ps!? Maybe you can help me understand?

[dschenken]

It's a postscript file, so it should be a postscript suffix - PS. I don't know why PTC defaults to PLT, because that was originally for HPGL files. In any case, now you know what I mean. The file that you are sending to Ghostscript.

see http://file.org/extension/plt and http://www.coolutils.com/Formats/PLT

[dnordin · Accepted solution]

Looking at your files, you're not doing any custom modifications to the files (like adding watermarks, adding the drawing revision to the filename,etc.), so why not just use the built in PDF conversion via FILE > SAVE-AS > EXPORT and use the PDF format?

The FILE > SAVE-AS > EXPORT method can be easily "mapkeyed", and the PDF configurations can be saved as profiles (.dop file extension) if you have different PDF export settings for different drawing types, etc.  Unfortunately , the profiles cannot specify a specific pen table file, so if you use different pen table files for different profiles, you need to set the correct pen table file as the default before selecting the profile.

We use to do what you're currently doing for a long time, but scrapped the method once the PDF export from Creo Parametric was working well.  The major reason we did this was for the capability of exporting to the PDF format with searchable text which I highly suggest doing.  The PDF files we export are "full sized" meaning that a "D" size drawing is exported into a "D" sized PDF file.  It's up to the user to choose what physical paper plot/print they want to create from the full size PDF file.  When we used the postscript method, we modified the postscript file to add a watermark before converting the postscript file to a PDF file.  It was handy because the watermark could not be removed via Adobe Pro because the watermark isn't recognized by Adobe as a watermark.  We still add a (non-removable) watermark with the new method, we just had to change how we do it.

Regards,

Dan N.

[FisnikBehramaj]

Hello Dan,

Your suggestion sounds like a good idea. We use the same pen-table for all our drawings. I would offcourse prefer to use the creo PDF-export if this makes life easier. 

So far i managed to solve using a specific pen-table as default. Great steps, thank you for the introduction. I will inform you on how it goes as soon as it is finnished. 🙂

Edited:

The solution:

I followed Dan's suggestion with the Creo Export. First of I had to make sure that the config.pro file was set up correctly:

pdf_use_pentable YES
pen_table_file P:\prolib\pentable\laserjet4mv.pnt
intf_profile_dir P:\prolib\pentable\ProfileSettings

Then I created a profile in the PDF Export Setting and saved it to P:\prolib\pentable\ProfileSettings (I use a specific folder for creo Startup for all our designers). 

As a last step I created a mapkey that does the work for me. 

I must say that this was a much easier way to solve the PDF export issue. 

Thanks agian Dan for the introduction. 🙂

Regards

Fisnik