Print to file / plotting

[davgail]

I am new to TFP and fairly new to CAD. (I'm an old pencil user).  I have been using SoftPlan for about a year and find my local print shop wants my plans in .plt format for plotting.

I have the HP GL/2 plotter drivers installed. For the SoftPlan plotting I can go throught the print function and print to file saving in the .plt format.

When I try that with TurboFloor I get through the entire process then it won't print to a file. Messages come up re .bmp and or operation not enabled.

What's up??

[mcpruitt]

davgail,

What are you trying to print?  The GL/2 plotter drivers, I believe, are only for vector printing.  If the image is composed of color fills and rendered views then you would need to use raster printing driver.  That is why it asks if you want to save as a .bmp.  You might want to check with your print shop.  Most will accept .pdf files and that seems to be the most common file type everyone uses.  If they don't have that ability it might be time to find a new one.

Hope this is of help,
MCP

[davgail]

MCP
Thanks for the reply. I went through the exercise again and found you are no doubt correct. The actual wording is "This device no capable of transferring bitmaps" I assume that is referring to the GL/2 plotter. I am trying to print/plot what I thought was a simple 2D drawing in TFP, but I guess the program works in bitmap images.

I checked with the printer and they can work with PDF. How do I  get the drawing it into PDF?

Thanks
Dave

[mcpruitt]

Dave,

If you have Adobe's Acrobat (not the reader) you can print to a .pdf.  If you don't then I suggest trying out PDF995 (www.pdf995.com).  It's quite capable and inexpensive if you decide to buy.  After you install it, all you have to do is select the print driver that it loads and it will then create a PDF file instead of printing it out.

Let us know how it works out for you,
MCP

[davgail]

MCP
Wow.... That was the EASY button. Cheap, painless, and works like a charm.

Thanks
Dave

[Doug.S]

Another excellent PDF "printer" and free and no advertisements is PDFCreator...I use it all the time

go to sourceforge.net and search for it

lots of other free programs (thousands) so look for other stuff too as needed

Doug.S