Notes on Printing on the Microlab HP DesignJet Plotter (plotter)

Printing from Windows Applications

• Portrait orientation prints sideways on the plotter
• Driver from HP (pl132en.exe) generates HP-GL/2
• ftp to Microlab computer using binary mode
• Driver built in to Windows NT 4.0 generates PCL

Plotting Cadence Virtuoso Layout

• Plotting lots of polygons, such as an entire chip, which can miss data if you use Postscript or HP-GL/2
• in Cadence, plot to a file using the RAS plotter output
• use the ras2rtl script to convert to an rtl file
• this script calls "raptor" and "RTLout", which should be in $CDS_INST_DIR/tools/plot/bin , but may not be
• rcp to silicon
• send to plotter with lpr (and maybe -v option)
• the rtl file prints much faster than HP-GL/2 and correctly, even though the file is about as big.  The ras file is generally a fair amount bigger.
• Plot Options form
• Display Type: versatecc
• had to adjust the CMOS8 stipple patterns and colors for good plotting of entire chips
• some stipple patterns disappear when plotting a full chip at E size; they will show up if you just plot on a smaller paper size (such as A), or plot a single cell at the same size
• Plotter Name: Wide HP inkjet plotter
• Paper Size: E
• Orientation: Automatic (check the front panel orientation)
• X Center Plot
• click Fit to Page, then adjust the scale until the total pages is 1
• rcp the file to silicon, since it is the Microlab file server
• lpr -Pplotter filename
• print quality must be adjusted on the front panel
• If .cdsplotinit was specifies too high of a resolution the plotter will choke and lose data, not plotting everything.
• 300dpi HP-GL/2 does a good job.
• 600dpi HP-GL/2 (printed on normal, which the manual says is 300dpi; best is 600dpi) does show more features and the colors are a little more bold, but it claimed it was losing data.
• 300dpi Postscript 2 didn't finish receiving after an hour.  Postscript files are twice as large as HP-GL/2 files.
• $CDS_INST_DIR/tools/plot/bin/plotconfig is a graphical interface to edit the .cdsplotinit, but it is pretty restrictive.