How to Increase the Capacity of a Print Spooler?

[Bill Thoen]

I've got a client who's trying to print a layout window with a MR SID
image in it to his plotter (HP 750C, with the latest driver) at "wall
map" size, and each attempt is ending up with a "raster engine error: 4"
when he tries to plot an area 15 miles wide. (Error 4, I've been told by
a MapInfo engineer, is basically an "out of memory" situation.)

It works with a 5 mile window, 10 miles and even about 12.5 miles, but
it won't handle much more than that. He's configured his system to write
to a print spooler and start printing as soon as it can.

He's using MapInfo version 8.0 Runtime, and he's got the latest HP
driver (downloaded today).

So we're guessing that the fix will be to somehow increase the capacity
of the spooler to handle the larger plot size. Since I don't do
production mapping, I'm not too experienced with print spoolers and
large format output, but I know that some of you can do this in your sleep.

So does anyone know of limitations in MapInfo version 8.0 that might be
causing this, or any tricks to try to get it to plot this image?

TIA,
- Bill Thoen

[Jon Gramm]

Bill,

 

I don't know what the upper limit on size is with the HP 750C, but I have printed a map

108 inches wide, by 108 inches tall using one before. (Countywide topographic & property map.)

I did it all in computer memory, I believe I set the printer to print to EMF, I set the virtual ram drive to 4096 mb, I also turned off my virus scan, and disconnected from the internet.

I also made sure I had plenty of free space on my hard drive, and I deleted all of my .tmp files from the temporary files folder.

 

If I attempted to go four pages wide, the plot would fail. I have printed larger maps with an HP 1050C.

 

If he gets it to print, it might take several hours to spool depending on the level of detail.

 

Depending on the operating system, it might be better to use an older printer driver, say one from about 2004 or 2005 if they are available.

 

Your client might also want to try to just print the map window rather at the desired size, rather than the Layout window. This might isolate any potential bugs with printing a Layout window.

 

That is all I can come up with for now, I hope this helps.

 

Regards,

 

Jon Gramm

[Ian Tidy]

Hi Bill,

Something your could try is in the HP Driver, tell it process the job in
the computer (rather than the printer) In the printer properties ->
Advanced -> Printing Defaults -> Advanced and General -> Printing
Prefernces -> Advanced.

This will sometime fix these problem. I solved most of our printing
problems by using a Linux Print server and passing the jobs through that
first.

Hope this helps.

Cheers Ian
______________________
Ian Tidy
GIS Analyst / Developer
Works Asset Department
Napier City Council
mailto:ia...@napier.govt.nz
http://www.napier.govt.nz | http://maps.napier.govt.nz

TIA,
- Bill Thoen

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[Glen]

Bill

Ian is right we use a HP750c and print maps over 500 meg
do not use a print spooler. print driectly to IP address and process
job in the computer
it will down load 22 meg at a time print and then dump 22 more meg and
print
it can take more than 4 hours to print a map

Glen

[L. Britt]

When this has happen to me, I go "old school".
I check print to file and then use DOS commands to copy to the
plotter.

copy *.prn \\path\plottername\*.*