21.02.02 Troubleshooting Printing to Plotter

Problem/Symptom

The plotter is printing strange characters or blank or partial pages.

Try printing one page at a time
Turn the printer off, wait 30 seconds and then power it back on
Turn off the printer and reboot the PC
Close all other running applications and try to print again (free up memory)
Try printing from a different software package (other than On-Screen Takeoff)
Check that the printer cable is connected firmly to the printer and the computer
Print a test page (from the Plotter itself) to see if your printer is mechanically sound
Set your plotter as the Windows Default printer
Try to print a test page from the properties menu of the printer
Check your free disk space - you need approximately 32 megabytes (MB) of free hard disk space to print a simple text-only document, much more for printing plan images (you should have several GB of hard disk space free)
If the printer is connected to a scanner or other device, disconnect the printer from the device and plug printer directly into computer
Reinstall the printer driver
Test with a different printer cable
Test from a different computer that has the same printer drivers installed
Have a technician reinstall the printer port
Contact the Manufacturer's technical Support

The plotter works when a print is sent from other applications but not from On-Screen Takeoff.

Download and install the latest printer driver from the manufacturer's web site (it should be a "PCL" type driver, not P/S)
Check the paper size settings when printing in On-Screen Takeoff - the paper must be large enough to account for the hard coded margins in the final printout when compared to the actual dimensions on screen
Check the Advanced options on Spooling and Memory - Spooling should print 'after last page is spooled' and Computer Memory (not printer memory) should be used for spooling
Try printing one page at a time