Image Issues

I have a drawing with two images inserted. One is a tiff of a tax map and is set for transparency. The other is a jpeg of an aerial photo (very large) used for the background. I have also drawn elements on top. When I go to print (on a Canon ipf700), it will start the normal spooling, but then I get a "out of memory" dialog and the print stops. My typical work-around to this has been to print it to an image file using the Tiff Image Driver.However when I print to the Image Driver, the print time is fairly long and the jpeg will not print (everything else prints correctly).For what it is worth, I can open the same drawing in ACAD 2004 and it will print correctly to the Canon. I open the same drawing on a machine with ACAD 2008 and it will hang up and not print (we have had a lot of problems with large jpegs in ACAD 2008). Can anyone shed any light on this? The machines we are using have 3-8 gigs of RAM, high-end video cards and 2.8-3.2 ghz processors on them.

Comments

  • can you blame it on vista? the hp drivers on vista are buggy...

  • No, I am using XP pro both here and at home. I do find this curious. It clearly is related to the size (in pixels) of the jpeg output. I can print this type of drawing if I only print a 11x17 sheet. I sometimes get a 24x36 to work. This particular sheet is 30x42. As I state above it does not work in ACAD 2008 either. I should also add I have tried this with other image drivers too, bluebeam and adobe. I get the same results. It is difficult to print a large size map. Something is afoot in the world of programming!

  • two possible fixes:1. did you try printing in the "foreground" as opposed to "background"?2. Keep everything in the same image format and color mode... TIFFs can be in INDEX or RGB color modes + different compression methods + mac/pc... If a TIFF is in INDEX color mode it will be siginificantly smaller than RGB mode (INDEXing reduces the # of possible colors). Smaller files means more images on the same hard drive and less network traffic (think orthophotos for an entire state)... JPGs are always RGB color mode and always the same compression method (with various degrees of compression)... You will need a photoshop-like program to modify the color mode of the tiff. I would stick with just JPGs for printing in CAD (tiffs slow everybody down)... To just swap out images in a DWG all you have to do is save a different copy of the image file and then update the image reference through the mage management menu.Make sense?Steve

  • how do you fit a stack of 30" x 42" sheets into a file cabinet? architects or engineers?

  • People use plan hangers, but sheets that big are a pain in the neck.A1 is generally preferred in Australia (~33x24 ins), trouble is we lost the 3/4 range of scales when we went metric and fitting sheet sizes is often a challenge.

  • Steve,I'm not sure I understand what you mean by printing in the "foreground" vs "background", how do you do this?Regarding the second suggestion. We have lots of software to manipulate images. The tiffs we use are extremely compact. If you are not familiar with Informatik's Tiff Image Driver I highly recommend it.I can print a drawing with just a tiff inserted. The problem seems to be the jpeg. Even with the tiff removed, I cannot get large sheets to print (30x42 is actually a "medium" sized sheet for us). This issue is problematic because we are Land Planners and often do layouts on top of aerial photos. Most of our work is large format.As far as storing gigantic sheets, I gave up on paper storage three years ago. I have two large sets of flat files in the back room gathering dusk. We recently moved on to a 1.6Tb NAS storage device (best thing since sliced bread).

  • John, If you open the properties on a printer and go to the advanced tab you can eliminate the "print spool" and print directly to the printer... When you print directly to the printer you will have a different memory footprint, so maybe it will work... on another note, this method may overload your printer memory.... worth a try i never deal with files that big...I mentioned the large scale plans because the "regulatory agencies" around here hate it when the landscape architects use these huge plans - get for planning, bad for archiving... different strokes, different folks....steve

  • I tried it...didn't work. I also spent alot of time playing with settings/variations of the drawing. I cannot get a jpeg to plot at anything larger than 11x17 (which is a real problem-long term). I am curious has anyone out there been able to print a jepg on a large sheet? Either to a physical printer or a print driver?

  • I had the same problem not long ago, working with a scan of an existing foundation plan. I typically send pdf files to the print shop for arch d size. Distiller ran out of memory in the process of creating the pdf.As a workaround, I created a windows bmp copy of the jpeg image and substituted it for the jpeg. That one printed without a hitch.

  • well i guess big JPG don't print well.... just like big PDFs on an HP 500 Designjet with maxed out memory...Steve

  • I did try converting to a .bmp. It would not print either. The image file went from 2.5 mb to 47mb, so we all know why jpegs are good.The reason why this is such a puzzle is.... I can take the same file, open it in AutoCAD 2004 (on the same machine) it will print. If I open it in AutoCAD 2008 OR BricsCAD 8, it will NOT print. So this tells me that something has changed in the programming to handle large raster images. This is a case were older was better.

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