Most of my clients are related to the mining industry, and as such seem to like to produce the largest size map possible with some form of raster base with both solid and transparent fills. This can become a nightmare when trying to produce plots. At this point the standard plotter for this industry is some variety of an HP Designjet. Due to the limitations imposed by MapInfo, these plotters offer more resolution than MapInfo can handle for the larger size plots and needs to be 'tweaked' to get the plotter/MapInfo to work together - so latest and greatest may not be worth the money if they can't work well with MapInfo. There are directions included in the MapInfo Printer guide that are quite helpful.
Another couple of items to add to the list are 1. MapInfo does not work with PostScript so stay away from that. 2. When working with the HP plotters, we always set the processing to be handled on the computer - it's MUCH faster for output time. That's true even with networked plotters. Hope that helps a bit. Barbara -----Original Message----- From: Susan Yu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 7:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: MI-L Best Plotter for MapInfo Hi everyone, I tried to do a search on this topic, but wasn't able to find answers. Currently we are looking to upgrade our plotters. We have an HP Designjet 1055CM connected through our corporate network. I find that the plotter in general is good (print quality-wise) with only a bit of "banding" streaks for solid fills... but then I have nothing else to really compare it with. Due to some complex and detailed graphics that we use, it takes time to plot large Arch E-sized maps (One example we tested took ~40 min from MapInfo... which is actually not too bad. We've seen it take 1-2 hrs for more complex maps.) The other issue is that when we "spool" our maps to the plotter, we can't touch the computer. If we do, sometimes, the information sent to the plotter gets messed up and prints parts of the map in gray. So to go around it, we set the map to print, have a very long break and come back once the map has finished spooling to the plotter. Although we've learned to live with these limitations, a recent visit from the folks at Xerox and their promises of better and faster plotters than our HP made us wonder what other MapInfo users are using for plotters. I'm really curious to know what other MapInfo users are using. So my question is more of a poll: What plotters are you using, and how do you find it performs with MapInfo? (pros and cons). Does anyone have Xerox plotters? Anyone have preferences to brand? (i.e. HP vs. Epson vs. Canon etc....) If you had all the money in the world, what plotter would you buy and why? ( i.e. what's the latest and greatest out there?) And any additional comments you might have regarding this... By the way, we're based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada - if that makes any difference. Thanks! I look forward to your responses! Susan --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 18493
