Printing help (Creo 3)

[psobejko]

We have an older E-size printer - the HP DesignJet T1200, but it's still kicking.

One of the problems is that the prints we send to it turn out in grayscale.

Does anyone know what settings to use so that they turn out in color?

I tried using plotters POSTSCRIPT, DESIGNJET600, COLORPOSTSC, all do the same monochrome output.

Maybe I have to go through the MS print manager?  The PDFs I print from Acrobat Reader on this printer do come out in color, so that might be it...

Anyway, this is the PCF file:

!

! Pro/Engineer Plotter Configuration File

!

PLOTTER DesignJet

BUTTON_NAME C - HP DesignJet T1200(XYZP0006)

BUTTON_HELP Front Office - near entrance

PLOTTER_COMMAND print /d:\\XYZfileserver3\XYZP0006

PEN_TABLE_FILE C:\PTC-Apps\Plotter\pnt\hpdj_t1200.pnt

PAPER_SIZE C

PLOT_SCALE fit_paper

PLOT_WITH_PANZOOM no

PLOT_NAMES yes

ALLOW_FILE_NAMING yes

DELETE_AFTER_PLOTTING yes

PLOT_TRANSLATE 1.000000 0.500000 default

and this is the pnt file:

pen 1 thickness .015 IN; edge_highlite_color attention_color section_color;

pen 2 thickness .008 IN;

pen 3 thickness .008 IN;

pen 4 thickness .012 IN;

pen 5 thickness .012 IN;

pen 6 pattern 1 IN ; thickness .012 IN;

pen 7 pattern .06 .06 .06 .06 IN;thickness .009 IN;

pen 8 thickness .010 IN;

is there a config.pro setting that I'm missing?

many thanks in advance for you print gurus.

[TomU]

To test whether the issue is Creo or the printer, print to a file, rename as .ps, then use Adobe Acrobat Distiller (need the licensed version of Acrobat) to convert this to a PDF.  If the PDF is in color, the issue is the plotter.  If the PDF is black and white then you know the issue is with Creo.

[psobejko]

I don't have Acrobat Distiller, but will try out your diagnostic method with ghostview.

[TomU]

Feel free to upload one here.  I'm more than willing to convert it.

[TomU · Accepted solution]

By the way, I don't know for sure if the "DesignJet" plotter output is Postscript, but I know for sure that POSTSCRIPT and COLORPOSTSC are.  Obviously to see color you would need to use the COLORPOSTSC one.  If the COLORPOSTSC works then there is possible that the "DesignJet" outputs black and white or the plotter will only accept black and white.

[psobejko]

Thanks for your suggestion about examining the .ps file; i used gsview and ghostscript and was able to save a lot of trees to see that postscript does generate monochrome and colorpostsc generates color, and was able to tweak the pen tables so that everything comes out black except the shaded views.

I am not sure why the "designjet" printer type was used with this machine, that seems to generate .hp files (hpgl ?); anyway I will switch to postscript language and go from there.

I am not sure why the colorpostsc driver didn't work for me before; I think maybe I wasn't actually using it and I had to restart creo because the print dialog box was full of trial-and-error PCF files (is there a way to "refresh" this list without having to restart ?)

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

DesignJet plotter set in your pcf file is BW plotter. I manually selected DESIGNJET650C to produce plot file. As you can see in a4.plt.doc (copy of a4.plt contents), PC1 HPGL-2 command sets RGB colors for individual lines.

See attachment.

MH

[MartinHanak]

Note: During printing into file, I unchecked pentable option.

[psobejko]

Ah, that explains it.  Funny how people here insist that they got color prints from it, but the .pcf file was always specifying the DESIGNJET plotter...

Anyway, I got it to work by using the COLORPOSTSC plotter (as our T1200 has the postscript option)

But is there an advantage to using the DESIGNJET650C printer instead?  I'm thinking it makes HP/GL2 output and that is better given that we are talking about an HP printer?

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

I can't remember any advantage of HPGL-2 against Postscript in case that Creo generates Postscript output properly. In the past there were cases, when Postscript output contained bugs.

MH