Problem printing to Canon 755 from AutoCAD

[CJJ]

Two of my users are having problems printing from AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009 to one of our Canon ipf 755 plotters, I was wondering if someone has had a similar issue or could help me troubleshoot this problem.

 

The users will print their drawing file from AutoCAD and everything looks like it's working. The log file shows that the drawing has sucessfully printed. The print queue for the plotter shows the job in its queue for a short time while it's spooling, then the job clears out as if it had sucessfully printed. But the printer itself never seems to see the file, there are no errors and nothing shows up in the print log. Basically, it seems to me like everything is working fine up until the print server passes the job to the printer, it's like the printer never saw it even though ACAD and the print server seems to think it worked. One user has been experiencing the problem for weeks now, and a second user just brought it to my attention today, saying that it worked fine last Friday. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed on either the print server, printer config files, or his local machine that could affect plotting since then.

 

Both users are on Windows 7 64 bit, using C3D 2009. We have a company print server, printers are pushed through GPO. We use configuration files (pc3) that are stored on a shared network drive, users only have read access to them so nobody can make changes and everyone is using the same configurations. These files work perfectly for dozens of our employees, so far it's only two that seem to be having the issue. Both of them can print from AutoCAD to our other plotters and printers, both of them can print to the Canon from Windows (Test Page, PDF files, etc). It's happening to all DWG files, I don't think it's just a specific file or set of files that aren't working because I've tried printing blank drawings with no luck.

 

Any clues what could be happening? Any ideas to help me troubleshoot this?

[CJJ]

One more thing I forgot to mention: we have two Canon 755 plotters and both users can print to one of them, and neither can print to the other.

[SLW210]

Can they plot to it if it is the Windows default printer?

 

Can they plot to it from other applications, such as Adobe Reader, Word, Excel, etc.?

[CJJ]

Can they plot to it if it is the Windows default printer?

 

Can they plot to it from other applications, such as Adobe Reader, Word, Excel, etc.?

 

Setting the plotter as the Windows Default makes no difference, still won't plot from AutoCAD.

 

The plotter will work with other applications, such as PDF, Word, and the test page.

[Mike_Taylor]

Check to ensure the ports for the malfunctioning printer is set correctly (compare to the port on a computer where everything is working fine). We had a similar issue with DWG files not plotting due to this (the protocol was not set up correctly and the data from the DWG was somehow being block/lost/not recognized). Once the protocol was switched from LPR to Raw everything was fine.

[SLW210]

Do you have all the updates and service packs for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009?

[CJJ]

TCP port is set to RAW, not to LPT.

And yes, all updates and service packs are installed.

[SLW210]

I would still say it is a driver/plotter issue, I had a similar problem where .dwg would not plot to my HP Plotter, I got an error message at the plotter though. I believe I just uninstalled and reinstalled plotter and driver.