Hewlett-Packard Co is very enthusiastic about a new generation of plotters, saying that they will enable engineers and others using computer-aided design applications to spend more time designing and less time waiting for their drawings. The company has six new plotters – ranging in price from $8,500 to $45,900 to replace the ones in its two high-end product families, the HP 7600 series electrostatic and HP DraftMaster pen plotters. Hewlett built these these products around the HP-GL/2 graphics language, and says that that all its future plotters will include the language. In the HP 7600 electrostatic plotter series, the new Model 355 plotter is claimed to set a new price-performance level for colour electrostatic plotters at $45,900 – it says similar plotters made by others are priced from $60,000. It uses 36 paper. The HP 7600 Models 250, 24, and 255, 36, priced at $25,900 and $29,900, respectively, are monochrome electrostatic plotters. All have one-year warranties against a typical 90 days. The The HP DraftMaster SX sheet-feed and RX roll-feed plotters are designed to give users faster access to their CPUs after sending a file to the plotter, and they use HP SurePlot disposable pens, which are more dependable. The HP DraftMaster SX is $8,500, the same as the HP DraftMaster I it replaces, and the HP DraftMaster RX is $10,000, $1,000 less than the HP DraftMaster II. And up to four users can share the HP DraftMaster MX by using the built-in 20Mb disk drive and four input-output ports. It costs $12,000 and is intended for users that are not on a network but want an easy way to share a plotter. There is a new ink regulator to stop leaking, and ceramic tips to prevent clogging and make the things last longer on the HP SurePlot disposable drafting pens. The new HP-GL/2 is based on HP-GL, but is claimed to provide faster plotting, more complex images and better software support, and IBM’s Cadam Inc, CADKey, Prime Computer, Image Systems, Intergraph, Italcad; MCS; Microspot; Pafec; Racal-Redac; Schlumberger; Siemens; Sigma Design; Versacad; and Ziegler Instruments have all committed to developing drivers for it. An HP-GL/2 process called poly line encoding compresses data in a graphics file and makes the trans mission of data from the personal computer to the plotter four to five times faster. And an HP-GL/2 cartridge with 20 fonts and 2Mb buffer is also available for the HP PaintJet XL colour printer, $1,000.
