Fonts not visible or translating

[FORMFACTOR]

I'm converting Solidworks files to ACAD DWG files. I'm doing this because the Solidworks translator does not do a very good job translating geometric tolerancing and hatching. I have loaded the HP Designjet 500 42+HPGL2 Card plot driver and have converted some dwgs to plt files. When i translate the files using the shareware version of HPGL 2CAD, the text does not translate or show up at all. Has anyone had this problem?

[GuthCAD Software Support]

Hi,

Most probably the missing text is any TrueType font text. The HP Designjet 500 42+HPGL2 driver actually outputs TrueType text in HP-RTL (HP Raster Transfer Language) rather than HPGL. And unfortunately the current HPGL2CAD does not support HP-RTL.

If making the plot file from AutoCAD this can be overcome by selecting the plotting option 'Output TrueType text as graphics.' I do not know whether Solidworks has an equivalent option.

A third party plotter driver called Winline also has the option to output TrueType text as HPGL graphics.

The next major release of HPGL2CAD will support HP-RTL, but this is a still a fair way off.

best regards
Software Support

[FORMFACTOR]

I have downloaded the Winline plot driver and it seems to be working well. Now i have another question. Will HPGL2CAD convert multi sheet drawings or do i have to create plot files for each page independently? So far it looks like it only converts one sheet at a time, but i was wondering if it was just a limitation of the shareware version.

[GuthCAD Software Support]

Hi,

Multi sheet plots are supported (also in the trial version.) For example if your plot file contains 3 sheets, then the software will output 3 DXF/DWG files, sheets 2 and 3 will have "-2" and "-3" appended to the base output name (e.g. myplot.dwg, myplot-2.dwg, myplot-3.dwg).

If you are not getting the above output try adding the following setting in the HPGL2CAD.INI configuration file:

[Settings]
IgnoreNR=1

If you still do not get multi sheet output, then if possible email an example file so that we can investigate. (Zip format is preferred, send to the email in the dropdown list under 'GuthCAD Software Support')

Thanks
Software Support