“If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.”
– Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, statesman and author
Several years ago, a friend of mine got a pen plotter. It was a big, beautiful instrument. It was shiny and gleaming, and it stood on its own two legs in the corner of his office. I was envious of him and his plotter for two reasons—one was that he could create blueprints and crank out professional- looking drawings at will, and the other was that everyone who saw it immediately knew he was an AutoCAD stud. It was more than a convenient tool to aide him in his work; it was a status symbol.
Over the years, I acquired and learned to use CAD software, but I never got; pen plotter. I thought about it, but I never got one because it’s hard to justify spending thousands of Washingtons on a status symbol that you can’t even drive out of your office, much less down the street.
As a result, I’ve become quite familiar with dealing with reprographics companies from Austin to Australia. I’ve learned how to find them, how to communicate with them and how to give them what they need to get what I need from them big beautiful rolls of blueline drawings. They’re all pretty similar in their requirements and in their way of asking you to jump through a couple of hoops when you have a plot you need printed.
You’ll want to find a reprographics shop that’s convenient to you and/or the job location. A lot of time I will be in one city working on the drawings and the people who need them are in another city drinking Starbucks and eating Krispy Kremes until I send them the drawings. If you have Internet access (read: you can do this from Starbucks, too), you can find a reprographics shop in almost any small to medium-sized metropolitan area fairly easily by going online on a search engine and typing “reprographics” and the city or town in which you want it plotted. Once you find a reprographics company, you need to check with them to find out how you can deliver the file to them and in which format they prefer it to be delivered. They might want you to download a print driver so that you can plot an output file that will be compatible with their plotter. Other times they might ask you to create a plot file or PLT file, which is a way of creating a generic file that can be printed on any plotter. Either way, many of them will want you to create an account and log in before you can send them your drawing file.
Most of these reprographics companies are reasonably priced; you can get a D-sized drawing (24 by 36 inches) plotted for about $2 or $3 per sheet, or an E-sized drawing (36 by 48 inches) for about $3 to $4 per sheet. At those rates, it would take a couple hundred drawings to justify buying your own plotter. It might make sense for a company with several designers, but for a freelance lighting or set designer, the Internet reprographics route is a good way to go. A lot of reprographics companies will even deliver within a certain area for a small fee ranging from about $5 to $20, depending on the travel distance.
The drawback is that most of these companies have very limited hours of operation, typically 7 or 7:30 a.m. to 5 or 5:30 p.m. So if you’re working after business hours or on the weekend, then you’re going to wish you had your own plotter. But here’s a little tip that I’ve recently discovered—Kinko’s can print blueprints up to 48 inches wide, and they’re pretty good. They have locations in 11 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the UK and Australia, and they’re open seven days a week with extended hours. Some are even open 24 hours a day, year round.
I have been working on a project recently and I needed prints very early in the morning. I looked up my neighborhood Kinko’s, which is about five miles from my house, on the Internet, and I called them late on a Sunday evening. I explained to an employee what I needed and he told me that they could have it printed for me in about an hour. They want you to register and log in in order to send files, but I just sent my file to their e-mail address without registering, and they got it and printed it. I picked it up early the next morning and they did a fine job. There is, however, a caveat: The people at Kinko’s are typically not well-versed in AutoCAD, while there is almost always a CAD expert at most every reprographics company. On this particular Kinko’s encounter, the employee asked for a PDF or a BMP file from which to make the prints. If they have to resize the drawing in order to make it fit, it could alter the scale, which could be disastrous. In this case, the drawings were fine, but I would be very cautious about this.
My friend ended up getting rid of his pen plotter and he’s no longer involved in design. Perhaps there’s more to being an AutoCAD stud than acquiring the veneer of one.
E-mail the author in his Starbucks “office” at rcadena@plsn.com.
