Plot Station and ImageSite CAD Network Plotting and Document Management Solution

Solution Overview—Focus on Plot Station

VIEW PDF		Solution Overview—Focus on Plot Station

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

What Is Plot Station?

Plot Station Server

How It Fits Together

Automatic vs. Attended Plotting

Saving Paper

About eQuorum

It doesn't seem all that long ago that the futurists were predicting the "paperless workplace".
    When CADD started taking off in the late 1980's, the possibility seemed probable. What was missing was the technical infrastructure to support the concept of document management online.
    What progress was made while automating much of the design process in the late 20th century?
    We used record amounts of paper—instead of one "original" per drawing, every time a change was made, a new copy was plotted for review.

Not everyone in the office had the ability to review online, and the senior staff doing the reviewing were resistant to this new technology—not to mention the lag times of licensing and code officials adopting standards that addressed online review.
That said, what is the point of this product bulletin? Well, first and foremost, it is to emphasize that paper isn't going away any time soon and that eQuorum is committed to updating our plotting solutions to help you plot what you need as quickly and efficiently as possible, taking advantage of features and functions of many

new state-of-the-art plotters and printers.
But plotting isn't just to paper anymore. We can help you plot to file or to the web so you can begin your journey to a "less-paper" workplace.

PLOTTING ISN'T ALWAYS CADD > PAPER There's also...
	Convert CADD Files to Adobe Acrobat PDF Files
	Convert CADD Files to TIFF
	Convert TIFF Files to PDF
	Send PDF Files to any Plotter

There are a number of plotting solutions available to today's CADD user. Simply using the "Plot"or "Print"command inside AutoCAD® or MicroStation® is familiar to most users.
Most of today's plotters also come with software to enable advanced functionality,

such as collating, folding or media selection.
These tools probably meet the needs of a small office running only one CADD application to one plotter type. But dealing with different methods depending on different combinations of application and plotter starts

to become a very real management challenge.
That's where eQuorum's Plot Station® shines. Common user interfaces allow users to quickly and easily plot any file to any plotter with ease.


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	Plot Station is a network plotting solution that allows you to plot an assortment of file types to just about any printer or plotter without entering the files' authoring application(s). It is especially well suited to companies that need to print sets of files repeatedly over the course of a project's life cycle. Note that Plot Station is a "solution,"not simply a product. The solution is made up of several components... some software, some hardware, and some consulting.	eQuorum has been involved in providing plotting solutions since the mid 1980's and has a staff of qualified analysts that understand how to implement Plot Station into your environment in a way as to make your job easier and your company more efficient. What, then, are the pieces that make up Plot Station? First, there's Plot Station Server—a piece of software that runs on a dedicated PC running Microsoft Windows NT Server or Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, sold and configured to handle your file types and your output devices.	Then, there's Plot Station Client. This includes four individual pieces of software that lets you request plots from within AutoCAD, MicroStation, or just from a Microsoft Windows environment. It lets you preview, too. How's it all fit together? That's where we're going now.


	Plot Station Server is the core piece of software that controls plotting throughput on your network. It knows what file formats to accept (Inputs) and where to send the result (Outputs). Some pieces you'll always have—other pieces are optional, depending on your needs. We developed our own queuing mechanism to give you more flexibility in deciding how and when to process jobs	and where to send them when they're done. Say a user just put together a job and sent it off to a plotter that is down for servicing... Plot Station Server's queuing tools allow the administrator (or anyone else with privileges) to move those already submitted files to an alternate device. Queues can be paused or scheduled to run at specific times to maximize performance.	Centralized symbology tables allow the administrator to control the level of drawing standards enforcement. You can maintain consistent-looking output from all your offices. And a single set of configuration files can be used by multiple Plot Station Servers, allowing load balancing and redundancy.


	Just what is it that you want to plot? CADD files, TIFFs, PDFs, Plot Files, or files from other Windows applications? That's where input drivers come in. Input drivers correspond to the source files for your plots. Some input drivers handle a single file format, such as	Adobe PostScript® or Acrobat®. Other input drivers handle multiple file formats. For example, eQuorum's the "Universal Raster" driver that handles most standard raster file formats, as well as some proprietary formats like Intergraph CIT, COT, and RGB.	Then there are the CADD input drivers. They will handle the CADD files alone, or the CADD files with raster reference attachments. There is also an input driver available to allow you to plot from within any Windows application to any Plot Station output.

Plotting is not the most exciting part of the design process, but without it, it can be quite difficult to convey the design intent to the many clients, consultants and manufacturers that need to take part in the "building" process, whether on the shop floor or at the construction site. So when deadlines loom to get the design distributed, the pressure is on the plotting system.
Plot Station Server provides a monitoring tool that allows you to see what's going on with all the Plot Stations on your network. You can shift jobs manually from one server to another or configure all the

servers to work in concert with one another in order to maximize throughput with all available resources being used optimally.
Plot Monitor can run anywhere on the network and gives you the control you need to avoid most problems. For the inevitable problem that still occurs, you are notified promptly so corrective action can be taken.
Plot Configuration lets you quickly define the parameters to be used when processing a job. Implementing corporate plotting standards is a snap with Plot Station's Drawing Attribute Tables and Pen Tables.

PLOT STATION EXTREMES!

Two customers, two approaches:

From a single Plot Station Server, plotting to over 250 devices (mostly small-format) at 50 locations on the WAN.
Using 5 Plot Station servers, working in concert as one, supporting 30 wide-format plotters. Up to 4 of the servers could go down and the only effect would be speed of throughput.

What's the right configuration for you? Ask us.



Plot Station Server has the ability to capture up to 25 attributes for every plot job it processes. Tools are provided so you can select which attributes are important to your company. You can use that data either to report how the plotting resources are being	used, or as a means for reimbursement. Plot Station Server works in concert with Plot Station Client to let you control whether or not plots get processed without specific accounting information being present with the job.	The Data Tracker module takes the raw data generated by Plot Station Server and converts it to either a Microsoft Access® database file or to a Microsoft Excel ® spreadsheet, allowing you to generate accurate plotting reports or invoices.


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		As the name indicates, Plot Station Client is the part of Plot Station that lets you submit files from your client computer to the Plot Station Server in order to get your plots. Plot Station Client also has the ability to let you accurately preview your plot to make sure that you get what you want. Plot Station Client is actually a collection of four pieces of software: Plot Manager; PRF Generator for		AutoCAD; PRF Generator for MicroStation and Plot View. Depending how you have your office network set up, you may not always install all the pieces of Plot Station Client on every engineer's workstation. If you only had AutoCAD loaded on a given PC, you wouldn't load the PRF product for MicroStation and vice-versa. Even though these programs are installed on individual workstations, they look to a central network		location for configuration information. That means it only gets configured once, and then the configuration is available to everyone on the network. As you add new users, the software is simply installed, pointed to existing configuration files, and your user is ready to go. The individual products can also share account and project lists to ensure that all users are always using current accounting information.


		It is pretty obvious that a product called PRF Generator probably creates PRFs. So then, what's a PRF? A PRF is a Plot Request File—a file understood by Plot Station Server as a set of instructions and parameters needed to generate the plotted output. A PRF file is created within an AutoCAD design session.		Items in the PRF include things like the area to be plotted, displayed layers, what reference files are attached, the plot scale, project and accounting information and more... the sort of things you would have to define if you were creating a plot from within AutoCAD. The PRF is just an instruction set with pointers to		current versions of all referenced files, so a PRF created last week and submitted today will generate a plot with this week's changes included. Multiple PRFs can be created for a single file, allowing you to easily plot multiple layouts—maximizing your ability to utilize AutoCAD's newest features.


PRF Generator for MicroStation provides a tool palette for quick access to PRF Commands.		PRF Generator for MicroStation is an MDL application that runs within MicroStation and is similar in concept to PRF Generator for AutoCAD. The PRF contains scale, rotation, level, and file information along with project and accounting data. If your MicroStation users create multiple		drawing sheets within a single design file, PRF Generator for MicroStation lets you create separate PRFs for each drawing sheet. PRFs give you controlled repeatability. If the file is set up correctly when the PRF is created, it will plot correctly next week, regardless of whether the last CADD		designer left it with incorrect displays or levels on. Batch plotting is a snap when all the plotting decisions have already been set—simply submit the PRFs and collect the plots. PRF Generator for MicroStation provides tool palette for quick access to PRF Commands.

Plot Station Client-Plot View for network plotting


Plot View is a true plot previewer that can either run as a standalone or be called from within Plot Manager or one of the PRF Generator products to make sure that you get the plot you want when you send a plot request. Because Plot View uses the same internal processing		engine as Plot Station Server along with the actual plotter configuration and symbology tables, the result you get from a preview request is processed in precisely the same way your plot will be processed—virtually assuring you that your plot will come out as expected.



With the advent of new multi-function devices that scan-to-copy,scan-to-file, and plot, a conflict has arisen between the engineers trying to plot and the print room staff trying to copy on the same machine. Other devices, such as small format laser jets or inkjet plotters are always	used for plotting and don't have to be shared in the same way. eQuorum has designed Plot Station to work in both environments: When sharing a print room device, plot jobs can be submitted at any time, held in the queue, and then released when the device is available.	If desired, the print room attendant can even redirect the job to a more appropriate device. The same Plot Station Server can be configured to send jobs to other devices directly without any intervention required.

ImageSite—a step towards document management in a paperless workplace

The "Paperless Workplace" is still several years, perhaps decades away. Today, however, eQuorum has technology that can help you to achieve the "Less Paper" workplace.
    ImageSite®, our web-based product, uses much of the same underlying technology found in Plot Station, but instead of outputting paper, we publish the images to the web server, where you can view them with just a browser—no plug-ins required.
     If you should still need paper copies, you simply select the images to be printed and submit them to the Plot Station Server that is an integrated part of ImageSite and collect your paper plots.
    This "Less Paper" strategy allows you to direct document consumers to images, rather than the sending images (plots) to the consumer. In many cases, the robust viewing and markup utilities within ImageSite will be adequate—but if you still need paper, it's only a few mouse clicks away.
    ImageSite also lets you archive your projects in its secure data repository for future retrieval. You can then search for files based on your custom attributes and view the drawing instantly, on-line.

ImageSite document management solution is a step towards a paperless work environment

Search for and view plots with just a web browser. Submit them to Plot Station Server for plotting. Save plot sets and resubmit them at any time.

ImageSite has too many features to list them all here. For more information, Contact eQuorum. Or for a free tryout of ImageSite Online, you can apply to Try It Before You Buy It.

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FOCUS ON PLOT STATION

As mentioned earlier, Input Drivers dictate what formats you can plot from. Output Drivers, then, control what formats and devices you can plot to.
    People usually think of the plotting process resulting in a paper image. We take a broader view—plotting is really a conversion process.
    We take a file from one format, whether it be a CADD, PDF, TIFF, or other file type, and convert it to a paper image or a "digital plot," that is, a file that can be viewed with commonly available software.

We write our own output drivers so we can control every dot on the plot—that way you are more likely to get the same output regardless of the plotter used.
eQuorum has a number of different types of Output Drivers. Device-specific drivers, as the name might imply, are written for a specific hardware device and have special controls and configuration settings to take advantage of the advanced features on those devices. These features might include folding, collation, and media selection. Examples of

device-specific drivers would be those for the XES Synergix and the Océ TDS product lines. Generic drivers output standard, well-documented output formats and can be used on many common device-types. For example, PCL/5 output can be used for most small format laser printers, and HP-RTL can be used for most large format inkjets.
Plot Station also lets you output to file, in order to create digital plots for archiving or electronic distribution. Output drivers in this category include PDF, TIFF and CALS.