Printing using SCRIPTS
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:48 am
I must say, I'm certainly developing a love/hate relationship with ICAD.
I often have to plot sets of drawings, and I have long been accustomed to automating plotting through the use of scripts. When I have to plot 50 drawings, and I don't have to look at them first, it's just waaaay more efficient.
Now I'm finding myself very frustrated and angry with the way ICAD handles form changes in scripts.
Maybe the problems I'm having are isolated to form names on our office printer, but I cannot get IntelliCAD to respect the form names I'm requesting in my script. I think the problem stems from having special characters like parenthesis and quotes. When I specify Letter (8.5" x 11") in my script, ICAD acts like it accepts this when in reality it just blows past and uses whatever default form was last used from the Plot dialog. Furthermore, using .PC3 files with this printer is no help whatsoever, probably for the same reasons. It is totally unpredictable with respect to page size and orientation when I use the .PC3 files even from the Plot dialog, although printing directly to the printer using the Plot dialog is working fine.
Previously when I encountered this issue on ICAD 6, I discovered that ICAD was making up hidden names for the forms used on the printers. Using those hidden names got me around the issues I think are coming from the form names in the printer driver, but the new version has done away with that, apparently not for the better from an automation standpoint.
I hope someone can shed some light on this because it's making me crazy. Every time I think I have something nailed down that will handle the paper size and orientation properly, even when called from a script, I end up finding out I do not have it nailed at all.
I often have to plot sets of drawings, and I have long been accustomed to automating plotting through the use of scripts. When I have to plot 50 drawings, and I don't have to look at them first, it's just waaaay more efficient.
Now I'm finding myself very frustrated and angry with the way ICAD handles form changes in scripts.
Maybe the problems I'm having are isolated to form names on our office printer, but I cannot get IntelliCAD to respect the form names I'm requesting in my script. I think the problem stems from having special characters like parenthesis and quotes. When I specify Letter (8.5" x 11") in my script, ICAD acts like it accepts this when in reality it just blows past and uses whatever default form was last used from the Plot dialog. Furthermore, using .PC3 files with this printer is no help whatsoever, probably for the same reasons. It is totally unpredictable with respect to page size and orientation when I use the .PC3 files even from the Plot dialog, although printing directly to the printer using the Plot dialog is working fine.
Previously when I encountered this issue on ICAD 6, I discovered that ICAD was making up hidden names for the forms used on the printers. Using those hidden names got me around the issues I think are coming from the form names in the printer driver, but the new version has done away with that, apparently not for the better from an automation standpoint.
I hope someone can shed some light on this because it's making me crazy. Every time I think I have something nailed down that will handle the paper size and orientation properly, even when called from a script, I end up finding out I do not have it nailed at all.
Maybe I'm the only person who does this anymore? 
