Design Integration Laboratory

AAA Output Room

Overview

It currently contains Saarinen, a Canon CLC 800 color laser printer with a Canon/Fiery PostScript rasterizer, and Anthemios, an HP 650C/PS D-size color PostScript ink jet printer with roll feed.

The output room exists to provide students and faculty of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts (AAA) with affordable access to special output devices over the campus network.

For reasons of campus planning and policy, we are not allowed to service users from outside the AAA. Printers similar to those found in the Output Room are available at the University printing department, and at commercial services downtown.

Schedule

Please see the latest schedule posted by the service window of the output room for the actual current open times.

Output can be picked up and paid for with an AAA Output Room Charge Card whenever the room is open for business, and only when the room is open for business.

Pricing

The current charge per page printed on Saarinen is $1.00, for either 8.5x11" or 11x17" pages. (No other page sizes are supported on Saarinen.)

The current charge for output on Anthemios is $1.00 per linear foot of roll bond paper. Anthemios prints are always 24" wide. (Anthemios should be used primarily for C-size (18x24") and D-size (24x36") prints.)

All customers are required to pay for all pages printed, user mistakes and user accidents included, so you should be careful about where you are printing to and what you are printing. Prints must be collected and paid for in the order they were printed.

Always check the Chooser before printing! and, see below for more printing tips. Architecture students can use the free black and white laser printers in the Design Computing Lab for proofing before using Saarinen and Anthemios.

Users do not have to pay for bad prints due to physical printing errors made by the printing equipment itself, like running out of ink or paper in the middle of a plot. Bad prints due to software errors do need to be collected and paid for, so use your black and white printers for working out any bugs.

By the way, there is no policy that the charge cards have to be turned in at the end of each term. It just ain't so! Apparently a false rumor about this got started somewhere, but it is is entirely fictious, and without basis in reality.

There is a purchase limit of two cards at one time, allowing you to buy $50 worth of printing at once. That should get almost anybody through even a heavy end-of-term weekend's worth of printing. If you think otherwise, please let us know. AAA Departments can get cards (for official use only) through the AAA business office.

Policies

Printing to output room devices Saarinen, our Canon CLC 800 PostScript letter and tabloid-size color laser printer, and Anthemios, our HP 650C color PostScript C and D-size ink jet printer, is strictly restricted to students and faculty in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts.

The major policies of the AAA Output Room are made by the AAA Output Room Committee, which includes the Associate Dean of the AAA plus key faculty and staff.

See also University Computing Policies.

Support

Printing instructions will also be available soon to members of the AAA community as handouts that can be picked up at the output room. At times when there is not a line for output pick up, output room staff will soon also be able to copy the printer description PPD files needed onto a user-supplied floppy disk. (Any AAA faculty with an immediate need for this information should contact Tom Pargeter.)

Simple immediate questions about print jobs can be sent to the AAA Output Room. More general technical support questions, including problems with printing specific documents, should be directed to the support staff for your department, either Arch Lab Support for Architecture students and faculty, or Tom Pargeter for the rest of the AAA.

Printing Tips

1. If you're not sure exactly what you're doing, get it right on a grayscale laser printer first, before printing to Saarinen or Anthemios, so you don't run up a big bill on experiments.

2. Don't try to print everything at the last minute, when everyone else is trying to print too. Plan your presentations ahead of time.

3. Do print good draft versions well before the real thing is due. That way you'll flush out any sneaky technical problems ahead of time, and you'll have something to fall back on in case of last minute disasters.

4. Don't be afraid to ask questions.

General Macintosh Printing Sequence

1. Use the Chooser to select the right printer.

2. Use the File menu Page Setup command in the application to establish the paper size, page orientation, and reduction or enlargement for printing.

3. If the application has a Document Setup menu command or some equivalent (maybe a Drawing Size command), use this to define margins and page tiling.

   Be careful not to set the margins too small for the printer you're using, and be careful to be really clear about whether you've requested printing onto multiple pages.

4. Use the File menu Print command to define the print job -- and then when you are sure everything is set correctly -- send it to print.

   Tp get things set correctly in the Print dialog box, first click the Options button and make sure you're using "Calibrated Color/Grayscale", and then click OK to go back to the Print dialog box.

   Then, for safety, you should always fill in the From: and To: fields in the Print dialog box, normally just with " From: 1 To: 1 ", unless you are intentionally doing tiled or other multiple page printing.

   Finally click Print to send the print job, and after a decent interval, go pick up your prints.

People