Plotstream Overview for Project Managers

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Comfortably delegate plot jobs to anyone

Control and prioritize plotting

Easily create plot sets

Focus on design - not plotting

Gain control of your AutoCAD^® plotting

Get a realistic project snapshot

Historical look-backs

Improve team productivity

Log every plot

Plotting becomes a trivial task

Project-centric plot control

Reduce Costs

Reduce plot training

Reduce Risk

Plotstream gives you the ability to configure critical project and plot parameters so you can more comfortably delegate plot jobs. Simplifying plotting for your team will reduce or eliminate "miscue" plot jobs, saving time, resources and frustration - yours and theirs. Although plot jobs can be delegated, you still have control over the queues where you can cancel, pause, or change priorities if necessary.

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Having Plotstream empowered users in the enterprise requires access to plot control and prioritization tools. Plotstream delivers a queue management tool that can delete, pause, and prioritize plot jobs. In addition, plot jobs can be redirected to other devices should one be down for maintenance or repair. These powerful privileges can be controlled using your existing network security credentials.

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Testimonials... "I researched several solutions, but only one company had a solution that worked and did not limit how we use Autodesk products. That solution is Plotstream by Triple R Technologies"... Steven S. Register, ASLA CAD Manager The Facility Group Smyrna, Georgia

Whether your workstation has AutoCAD^®loaded or not, you can easily create plots of one drawing or sets of hundreds. Plotstream's wizard-driven interface is intuitive and easy while giving you the amount of control that you want. Since the plot processing is done by the Plotstream server(s), your workstation is free for other activities. Plotstream's monitoring capabilities enables you to view progress and control priorities (with sufficient privileges).

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A Plotstream enabled environment allows you to refocus efforts back on what you do best - design. Your own expert(s) set and control the plotting environment for your corporate standards and project specifications. Your team can then create the plots they want, when they want them.

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With the newfound control over plotting you can better utilize your team and hardware resources. Plotting issues and delays are significantly reduced. The plotting of multiple projects is easily prioritized, paused, or changed on-the-fly. Multiple plotters can be engaged to increase productivity and multiple Plotstream servers can significantly increase plot processing volume. All are choices and control you did not have before.

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Since your team is continuously working on designs, plotting latency could allow some drawings to not accurately reflect changes made to associated drawings. Some drawings could have even been replaced or eliminated. This could become critical when creating bills of material or ordering equipment and material. Because Plotstream can plot an entire project set of drawings at one time, you output a much more realistic snapshot of your project at a specified point in time.

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Because Plotstream logs each plot, guesswork is eliminated and historical information is easily accessible. Now you will confidently know how many D-size plots were made for "Project XYZ" last month on the "ABC500" plotter. Harvesting this information allows you to calculate efficiencies, project plotting costs, throughput, consumable usage, and more. You can easily access valuable data that can be used for marketing, estimating, budgeting, process optimization, etc.

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Now users can create one or hundreds of plots with ease. Traditionally, each drawing file had to be opened in AutoCAD^®, configured for plotting, submitted to the plotter. Users would then wait on the drawing to be processed on the workstation. Each drawing could take several minutes to configure, submit, and process. This is repeated for each drawing in the set. On a large project this could take hours or days while the user is not drawing or designing anything. Plotstream automates this entire process. The Plotstream server(s) performs all of the processing - not the users' workstations. Users are able to do what they were hired for - designing and drawing.

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Each plot produced through the Plotstream system is silently entered into an easily accessible log. The logged information can be used to troubleshoot as well as to calculate efficiencies, project plotting costs, throughput, consumable usage, and more. Plotstream also integrates into several of the industry leading cost recovery and print tracking systems. Plotstream data is transparently passed to these applications without any user intervention.

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With Plotstream the attention, frustration, and angst previously associated with plotting is all but eliminated. You now have a consistently applied framework to control and monitor your plotting environment. No more will you need to dedicate significant team resources and expertise to simply plot drawings. Plotstream helps reduce the risk of releasing drawings at the wrong revision level or incomplete sets. When you release a drawing set, you know it has been produced to the specifications you require.

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Plotstream's project-centric control empowers you to configure enterprise plotting defaults as well as the project specific overrides for everyone within the scope of the Plotstream server(s). This configuration includes CTB and STB plot styles, PC3 plot device files, XREF paths, font paths, resource files, drawing file locations, and more. Once you configure these parameters, anyone using Plotstream uses those same project settings.

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Plotstream is designed from the ground-up to save resources and address the real issues of add-ons, upgrades, integration costs, costly training, and third-party hardware/software proliferation now faced by users in the enterprise AutoCAD^®environment. With Plotstream, you will save on AutoCAD^® licensing, third-party plot drivers, controllers, rippers, training, and hardware. Plotstream offers an outstanding ROI that will free up valuable resources.

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Since you or another plot expert will make most of the plotting configuration decisions, your remaining teammates can be spared additional training for plotting. Plot jobs (agents) can be saved to file and used as templates. By using these agents, Plotstream users do not need to be plotting experts to create perfect plots.

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Plotstream will reduce risks associated with project drawings by increasing accuracy and consistency. Plotstream's project-centric methodology places the control and responsibility of the underlying technical aspects of plotting on your plotting expert(s) instead of relying on each plot user to correctly make all plotting decisions. Plotstream helps reduce the risk of releasing drawings at the wrong revision level, incomplete sets, and more. Plotstream also uses the best plot engine available for AutoCAD^® - AutoCAD^® itself. No third-party plot engines can ever plot AutoCAD^® DWGs as well as AutoCAD^®. Plots produced through Plotstream are exactly like the original AutoCAD^® plots because they are. When you release a plotted drawing set, you know it has been produced to the specifications you require.

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