ME-10 plotter output

[bfisher]

I would like to buy another plotter for a remote ME-10 installation, and need to know whether I need the optional HPGL/2 card (which is a $400+) option. This plotter, an HP Designjet 500, lists the standard print language as HP-PCL3-GUI, which I've never heard of. Since ME-10 sends directly to the Windows driver now I'm hopeful that I don't need HPGL or HPGL/2. Does anyone have any experience with this issue?

Thanks

[John Scheffel]

I don't have any experience with the hardware you mention, but if your site is 100% Windows then you should not need HPGL on your plotter. The Windows versions of ME10/Drafting/Annotation use the Windows printer drivers to generate the output, they do not send HPGL to the printer/plotter. In fact, you couldn't even get HPGL output from the Windows versions until version 11 was released. As long as the plotter includes a Windows printer driver it should work.

If you are running a Unix installation, then you probably need a plotter that supports either HPGL or Postscript. At least these were the only two formats available when I was supporting HP-UX.