The Letterville BullBoard: Setting up Summa D60 for AutoCAD Plotting

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Posted by Tony Broussard (Member # 935) on :

I just got my Summa D60 (woo hoo!)yesterday and also have AutoCAD 14 and would like to plot on the Summa with it. Can anyone give me some insight on how to do this?

Thanks!
Tony B

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Tony Broussard

Best advise received: Don't take any wooden nickels......if you do...burn'em!

Posted by David Fisher (Member # 107) on :

I havent used a Summa plotter before but to do the same with a Roland you only need to get the (correct) windows driver for the plotter and then set up a profile for it in Autocad.
Are you reasonably au fait with AutoCad? It can be a little quirky to set up plotters in Acad if you're new to it.
Does your Summa have a windows driver?
I'm a teeny bit rusty on Acad14 having gone to 2k but I might be able to cast my memory back if you run into trouble.
I believe Carlos Herara (sp? sorry Carlos) runs a plotter through Acad so hopefully he's lurking around somewhere.
Good luck but you shouldnt need it if the Summa is anything at all like the roland.
David

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D.A. & P.M. Fisher Signwriting
Brisbane Australia
da_pmf@yahoo.com

Posted by David Fisher (Member # 107) on :

Something else I just thought of.
If your plotter doesnt have a windows driver you might be able to get away with using another driver that uses HPGL or HPGL2, if you plotter will accept either of them.
I would think they should, it seems to be a pretty widely used language and I've used it on a Graphtec in the past.
David

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D.A. & P.M. Fisher Signwriting
Brisbane Australia
da_pmf@yahoo.com

Posted by Jim Doggett (Member # 1409) on :

Hi Tony:

I'm with Summa, but unfortunately don't know a lot (anything) about AutoCAD. Our cutters are HPGL/HPGL2 compatible, however, we may also have specific AutoCAD drivers.

First thing tomorrow morning, I'll have my tech guy get in touch with you. I'll also send an e-mail to our engineers in Belgium, as they may know more.

Thanks for choosing Summa!
Best Regards,

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Jim Doggett
Vice President
Summa, Inc.

Seattle, WA USA
jim@summusa.com

Posted by carlos herrera (Member # 503) on :

hello, yes i just happened to be lurking around today. if i am not mistaken i had gotten the information from autodesk that autocad should recognize and hpgl plotter setup. i tried setting up my roland through hpgl but like dave fisher said it is a bit tricky, so i just used the roland printer driver from Roland and have had no problems.

if you ever get stuck in autocad and need help give me a holler.

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Carlos Herrera
*SignLizard* on chat
Visionary Signs
Carson, CA 90745
310-886-4581 Page
VisionSgn@cs.com
"SIGNS DONT COST MONEY, THEY MAKE MONEY"

Posted by Jim Doggett (Member # 1409) on :

Hi Tony:

Here's another option, which was broght to my attention by the developer of CoCut.

---------
The actual version of CoCut Pro has a plug-in for AutoCAD version 14,15,2000
and LT. Installation is a little more difficult than in Corel but it works.
Maybe this helps.
Best Regards
Albert Meyer
Managing Director
---------

I'm still working on our engineers in Belgium to get back to me with a Windows driver solution, should one exist. Otherwise, you can always set the D60 in HPGL mode via the Cutter Control software or the on-plotter control panel.

I'd encourage you to consider CoCut Pro as well, since it does much more than any Windows driver can. If you'd like to try it out, a demo can be downloaded for free at http://www.cocut.com .

Best Regards,

Jim

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Jim Doggett
Vice President
Summa, Inc.

Seattle, WA USA
jim@summusa.com

Posted by Jim Doggett (Member # 1409) on :

Hi Tony:

I just e-mailed you the procedure for AutoCAD 2000 (hopefully, 14 is similar). If you have any difficulties, please call our toll-free tech line, which you'll find in your D60 Users' Guide.

Thanks,

Jim

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Jim Doggett
Vice President
Summa, Inc.

Seattle, WA USA
jim@summusa.com

Posted by Wim Vanraepenbusch (Member # 2015) on :

Hi Tony,

Sorry about the delay from the 'engineers' from Belgium, but we tried out almost all options.
First of all if you are running AutoCad 14 under Windows 95 or 98, then it is easy, We have a printer driver that works under 95 or 98 . It can be found at http://www.summa.be/download/Cutter_Driver/scut-drv.exe.
If you are working under another OS then you need a different driver. I’ve tried out a numerous of different drivers and I must agree with our AutoCad authority Carlos. Trying an HP/GL driver works, but it is difficult to set it up. Therefore I’ve tried out the Roland driver. You can down load it from http://www.rolanddg.co.jp/en/r14_win.exe. It works great with AutoCad 14 and the D60.
The only thing you have to take care of is setting the D60 to emulate HP/GL and to set the driver to ‘absolute’ (this is an option you encounter when you install the Roland driver). If you do not choose ‘absolute’, then your cutter will give a fatal error each time you send a job. If you choose ‘absolute’, then the driver will work impeccable.
When installing this driver, you encounter the disadvantages of a printer driver. Because of Windows technology the maximum page length of a driver is often limited to a maximum of 64 inches. Our Windows driver can get around this by using the scaling function. The Roland driver does this automatically. However both solutions have as a disadvantage that the resolution drops drastically when you want to perform ‘long plots’. If you want to fully exploit the quality of a D60, then I would advise to listen To Jim’s advise.
There is just one mistake in the info he got from Belgium about AutoCad 2000. That is that it is perfectly possibly to perform ‘long plots’ in AutoCad 2000 with the driver ‘DraftMaster RX 7596B’ The disadvantage is that of a printer driver. The longer you choose the page size, the lower the output resolution is.

Wim Vanraepenbusch

Service engineer
Summa NV
wim_vanraepenbusch@summa.be

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Posted by Tony Broussard (Member # 935) on :

Thanks for the replies, great customer service! I tried the 2 websites to get the drivers that Wim mentioned but I get the 404 error of death. I emailed Wim also about this as well.

Thanks!!
Tony B

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Tony Broussard

Best advise received: Don't take any wooden nickels......if you do...burn'em!

Posted by Tony Broussard (Member # 935) on :

Looks like I got it! There was no Draftmaster plotter in the Autocad plotter list, so I just used the another Draftmaster model and it worked perfect! Thanks to all for your help.

A Sincere Thanks!
Tony B

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Tony Broussard

Best advise received: Don't take any wooden nickels......if you do...burn'em!

[This message has been edited by Tony B (edited March 14, 2001).]

Posted by Dave Grundy (Member # 103) on :

I Can't help myself!!!!!!!!

Once again Roland comes to the rescue with drivers!!!!!!..Summa is telling one of it's customers to download a driver from Roland's site to make his cutter work?

Kinda strange?

Boy..sorta makes ya wonder which cutter to buy doesn't it?

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Dave Grundy
AKA "applicator" on mIRC
"stickin' sticky stuff to valuable vessels and vehicles!"
in Granton, Ontario, Canada
1-519-225-2634
dave.grundy@quadro.net
www.quadro.net/~shirley

Posted by David Fisher (Member # 107) on :

Dave,
I've had to set many a plotter up in Autocad, I love the program it has no peer that I've used but...
Setting up plotters in R14 can be a MAJOR pain because it is so powerful and caters to so many industries and disciplines, I know I've done it so many times with so many printers and plotters I couldnt count them all. Believe me, when you find a driver that does the job you dont care where it comes from you just use it.

I'd say that was a damn good bit of customer service from Summa btw.
David

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D.A. & P.M. Fisher Signwriting
Brisbane Australia
da_pmf@yahoo.com

Posted by Mike Pipes [in a cubicle] (Member # 1841) on :

Move on to AutoCAD 2K, it's much nicer for plotting!

If any of you guys ever have a question about AutoCAD dont hesitate to ask.. I'm an authorized instructor for R14 and have been usin 2K since they sent out betas for testing and demonstration. =) Plus I've had quite a bit of time with Mechanical Desktop (AutoCAD that's more adapted for fabrication).

Tony, sorry I didnt have a chance to investigate your email.. I was gonna suggest using the HPGL/2 driver as well but didnt know if Summas support it.. looks like you got your answer though. =)

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Mike Pipes
-----trapped in a box with a computer and a slice of cheese-----

Posted by Jim Doggett (Member # 1409) on :

Hi Dave Grundy:

I can't help myself either! Summa was the first to develop a vinyl cutting plotter that was not based on older pen plotter technology. Along with that we created our own graphics language, DMPL, which was a substantial leap in plotter evolution (much as high-speed tangential, OPOS contour cutting, USB connectivity, OptiCut and other Summa innovations are).

In re: HPGL drivers, the credit goes to Hewlett Packard. We also support this standard, although it lacks the many capabilities of our more advanced DMPL. Products such as CoCut, SignLab, Inspire, etc. are preferred since they support our DMPL standard. But not everyone wants to use a "cutting" program, so the more generic HPGL is an acceptable alternative. The draw-back is that in HPGL mode, users lack the software-driven controls and features that Summa cutters are capable of, and from a software standpoint, our cutters would seem much like any other; until, of course, the cutting begins (cutting full rolls without readjusting media, even at full speed, and the like).

Best Regards,

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Jim Doggett
Vice President
Summa, Inc.

Seattle, WA USA
jim@summusa.com

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