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HydroCAD® Stormwater Modeling - Since 1986
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Understanding Printer Drivers
Rather than providing a separate driver for thousands of different printers, HydroCAD includes a basic set of drivers that will handle virtually any printer. If your printer does not exactly match one of the drivers provided by HydroCAD, it will probably "emulate" one the specific HydroCAD printers. Your printer's manual will contain information on what printers it is designed to emulate. There may also be advice on what drivers to use if a specific driver is not available. Some newer printers are designed to work only under Windows. These are often called Windows-Based printers. In order to work with DOS programs (including HydroCAD), you must install the special emulation software included with the printer. The following general guidelines can also be used to help you decide which driver is best for your printer. Impact-type Dot-matrix printers are almost always Epson compatible. Many will have switches that set the emulation mode. Most newer printers are "24-pin" and should use the Epson LQ/Stylus driver. For most 9-pin models use the Epson FX/LX driver. For old 9-pin models you may need to use the Epson MX driver. An IBM Proprinter can also be set to emulate an Epson printer. You must check the switches. Use the Proprinter or Epson LQ/Stylus driver depending on the setting of the switches. (Epson LQ/Stylus gives better results with HydroCAD.) All HP Paintjet printers should use the Paintjet driver. Some Paintjets can also use the LaserJet II driver. Check your manual. Other HP inkjet printers will use the Deskjet driver. Most other makes of inkjet printers, such as the Cannon BubbleJet, use the Epson LQ/Stylus driver. However, some are Deskjet-compatible, such as the NEC Superscript. Check your manual for details. Most Laser Printers use the HP-PCL Printer Control Language, and are supported by the drivers discussed below. Some laser printers use the Postscript printer language, which is not supported by HydroCAD. If you have such a printer you will need to use it in PCL mode for it to work with HydroCAD. Most current model Laser Printers use "PCL-5" or higher. All such printers should use the LaserJet III/4/5 driver. These printers can also be used with the LaserJet II driver, but this will not utilize advanced printer features such as vector line drawing. Early model Laser Printers use the "PCL-4" language. These printers do not have vector graphics capabilities and must be used with the LaserJet II driver. Note: Starting with HydroCAD 5, the Settings help screen contains detailed information on the selection of printer drivers. |
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