If I open MicroStation V8i and attach a pdf file with the Raster Manager and then will print it out it takes a very long time.It is not because the pdf file is particularly large.
Are there others who have experienced this and can I do something for examples through the setup in the printer driver?
I use the printer driver printer.pltcfg.
Regards
Carsten
Hi Carsten,
It seems that there is something wrong.
Here are the results of my tests :
Save as the PDF file to iTiff file : 9 s
Plot the iTiff file : 5 s
Plot the PDF file : > 40 s
The time shown above is the delay between starting the operation and receving a info bubble telling me that a print request has been sent to the printer.
I'll check with some of my collegues to know if there is a particular reason for the long delay.
Thanks,
Mathieu
I have the same problem as well. I have not yet investigated the problem, but here's a symptom. If I plot the attached file to the un-changed system\hpglrtl.pltcfg printer, it takes 1-2 minutes. If I plot the same file to my modified copy of the hpglrtl (called Oce-Full.pltcfg), it takes 12+ minutes. Also, I've had cases where if I use my vba routine that calls up the print dialog box and sets some settings, Microstation may crash (just quits, no warnings.)
I've attached a zip file with the file in question & the plot configuration file that I'm using.
--Thanks, --Robert
Robert, when you compared print performance with the default hpglrtl.pltcfg, did you print using the same paper size and at the same scale? Printing to Arch E1 (42x30"), I get similar print times (~7 minutes) using both the default hpglrtl.pltcfg and your printer driver configuration file.
Concerning PDF printing, PDF attachments are treated as "unlimited resolution" raster attachments in MicroStation. That is, the contents of the PDF are rasterized at exactly the resolution requested -- around 72 DPI in the view display, and 300 DPI when printing in non-rasterized mode using a default printer driver configuration.
Say the PDF attachment fills the sheet definition. When printing to Arch E1 at 300 DPI, the PDF will be rasterized to 12600 x 9000 pixels. Uncompressed, that's 324 MB worth of pixel data.
When printing a normal, "limited resolution" raster, the pixel data isn't scaled up beyond its native resolution. So if you tried to print a 1024 x 768 JPEG file occupying the same amount of space in the design, at the same print scale, the print engine would ask Raster Manager for 12600 x 9000 pixels, but only get 1024 x 768 pixels back. The printed image will look grainy. That's not true for PDF -- since PDF can be rasterized at whatever resolution the print engine requests, Raster Manager will provide the pixels at full resolution and the resulting printed image will look very sharp. But it will take longer than printing a smaller raster file, and produce a larger plot output file.
I'm not familar with the iTIFF raster format or the process of converting a PDF to iTIFF in MicroStation. I don't see a way to control the resolution of the generated raster file. However, when I convert Robert's PDF attachment to standard TIFF, what I get is a 1056 x 1728 pixel file. Only 5 MB worth of pixel data -- quite smaller than the 324 MB needed for the original rasterized PDF. I suspect the iTIFF file has a similar maximum resolution, and thus is not a good basis for print performance comparison.
You can improve print performance when printing raster data in non-rasterized mode by reducing the raster quality/resolution. That's specified either in the printer driver configuration file or in the Print dialog raster options. Keep in mind that even when dealing with identical resolutions, printing PDF attachments will always be slower than printing native raster files due to the time it takes to rasterize the PDF data.
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Andrew,
You are right that the PDF file format hasn't a fixed number of resolutions (though the width or the height of a resolution cannot exceed 24575 pixels), so it is possible that much more data is requested during a print compared to a raster file format that has a fixed number of resolutions like iTIFF.
But the printing test I had done gave me a resolution factor near 1 (when a PDF is saved to another raster file, the resolution factor used is 1). So the among of the data was nearly the same for the print as for the save.
After some investigations I found that some optimization for rasterizing the PDF wasn't used when printing a PDF.
Carsten,
I have entered a TR about this problem.
A workaround has been found.
Just set the checkbox Rasterized (on the Print dialog) and the printing should be much faster (it is around 8 times faster on my computer).
Hi,
Rasterized may be faster, but what is the file size difference. Usually when I do rasterized, the file becomes too big to do anything with.