If you have used this service, tell me about it. I cannot print anything larger than legal sized sheet, and I will be having occasional needs for doing construction documents in D and E sizes.
We’ve no local printers with any capability for printing from .pdf files, so my only recourse is to go long distance.
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Replies
Postnet is half price of Kinkos.
Gene,
I looked into them once. I think I wanted to print a fairly large pdf. book and I figured it would be cheaper to use them rather than pay for the ink in my printer.
Two problems I had-
1. I wanted it that day and the turn around quoted online was a few days.
2. The price was premium for the convenience of printing online.
I ended up in the kinkos store that day with the pdf on a cd and the counter guy printed it off for me while I waited, and the rate was significantly less than what they quoted online.
You cannot convey tone in an email.
I just paid 4.50 over the counter today at Kinkos for a 2' x 3' print.
It would be half at postnet but I didn't have a day to wait. If I email them a plan in the morning, I usually can pick it up later that day. Gene, ask the same question in Chieftalk or do a search. I remember seeing something about national services that will deliver to your door.
I've used Kinko's to duplicate 3X2 (whatever letter that is) plans just because I needed so many for permits. They gave me some software so that I could send it electronically but have not tried it yet. Don't know where to go for prints if it was sent to PostNet. Maybe they mail it to you. I used to have a plotter but it wasn't really economical after a while. I had a structural engineer that would take emailed AutoCad files and was willing to print some out.
Tyr
2' x 3' is "Arch D" size. I did some preliminarys in Kinkos again today. I decided that I didn't want to spend the $4.50 for each sheet so I asked for 12" x 18" today. I figured I'd cut my printing bill in half that way and the scale would be 1/8" instead of 1/4". The girl told me that they would have to print that size on full sheets and cut them and I'd be paying a small premium for that. She said it was $2.50 per sheet. Then, she mercifully told me that if I used the 11" x 17" it would come out of the normal printer and it would only be $ .20! Twenty cents??!!!!!I let her print them on the 11 x 17 and had to fish around in my pocket for a bill and some change for the 6 copies. I'm now going to size all my preliminarys on 11 x 17 if I can get the floor plans onto them.
I'll bet that most all the plans you might need to do can be done on 11x17 size, if you do a few things.
Slim down your margin at top and bottom. Export the plan views at a scale of 3/16" = 1'-0". Do blowups of some of the more detail-intense areas as required.
3/16 you say? Who can scale a print at that? But I have seen a lot of section cuts and detail elevations like for cabs and room trim done by architects at 3-something scales, like 3/8 and 3/4 equals a foot.
What counts is clarity and ease of reading and understanding.
At 11x17 sheet size, you'll of course use more sheets to do the job, but save a bunch on copying. That D size sheet has over 4.5 times the area as the 11x17, but 5 times the 11x17 cost is only a buck, and that is a huge savings as compared to the $4.50.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
I've done 3/16" scale and laughed when I watched the carpenters trying to figure it out. I figure their brains need a little exercise. Most of the houses I'm working on are actually pretty small and the only place I'd really need a larger sheet is for the city showing the site plans. I'm going to set up a default plan using 11 x 17 as the sheet size and just see what happens.
I use 11x17 for almost all of my plans. I think it's the perfect size.11x17 will fold up into a letter size plan, which is very convenient for storage purposes, organization in field job boxes, to send to clients, etc.I bought a HP 9650 ink jet plotter that will do 11x17 (actually I think it will do 13x19, but I stick with 11x17) and use it all the time. The purchase price was something like $160. I may not save money, but the paper and ink are both reasonable.The biggest thing I like is the convenience. It's one thing if you live next to a 24 hour Kinko's, but I don't. I can print out plans right before walking out the door to go to the county and apply for a permit. Or make changes right before a client meeting. The time saved is huge.
Jon Blakemore RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
I've got the same printer (HP 9650), and it does a nice job. I do all my preliminary printing on the HP and have no issues reading text, even when reduced to fit and without changing my text scale they are still legible (just lighten the pens). That being said, most building departments I'm dealing with require the prints to be 24x36 or "D" size, with a scale no less than 1/8". So still stuck with outsourcing the final cd's. We gave up on plotting and reproducing a few years ago, and found a local print shop that is still relatively inexpensive. I have also found some crazy low prices in AZ on some jobs we did out west (.85/sheet "D" size). Cheapest out my way I've found is 1.25/sheet. FedEx?Kinkos are at the top of the price scale here also, and last time I check were around 4.50/sheet and additional "set-up" fees.
Thanks for that suggestion Jon. I'm going to look for a $160 plotter. I'll make that up in gas in a few months. I also agree about the convenience of folding the sheets up and putting them in a file.
Buy these by the case, at a couple bucks per. Roll up your "for construction" sets around one when you send them out. Get them with your biz logo stenciled on the most-used side. Little clear plastic 6-inchers are even cheaper.
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Seriously, if your plans need to be scaled, you are not doing your job. And most of the time, you can get all you need on 11x17 without having to deviate from the expected 1/4 per, for the floor plans and ellys.
Out of curiosity, how did you arrive at pricing for a typical design package? Is there a "going rate" in the Austin area for what you are doing?
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
"Seriously, if your plans need to be scaled, you are not doing your job."Gene, I've been on the building end of plans for more than 3 decades so I have a pretty good grasp at what dimensions are needed. I don't give a hoot if the carpenter can't figure out how to scale a 3/16" scale or 1/8 or whatever I put out there. He can go buy his own scale...I quit baby sitting guys more than two decades ago. I might consider buying those scales by the buckets if I can get some advertising on them though. It looks like a good marketing tool. I don't know how we arrived at the price for the design package. Remember, I'm marking everything up 1.67 so if you divide the number by that, you'll get close to the cost. $3500 is just a nice easy number and it seems to fit. I'm just finishing one package now and we have been very generous with site visits and revisions. I don't feel a need to add extra for another site visit and feel good that we can get her a complete set of drawings to her satisfaction without hitting her up for a couple hundred more. I think one factor in the setting of our price was my desire to sell at a high enough number so I could find a sub to do the drawings and still get our markup. If we try to sell any lower, it might get tough.
Same here. When I got rid of the big plotter I used an HP that would crank out ledger sized prints. All depends on what cities/counties will accept. I happened to be taking a night AutoCad course at the time and the instructor was always checking drawings with his scale. I had dimensions on all the plan and elevation views anyway and it boggled my mind (as a GC) that anyone on a crew would rely on a scale. So every drawing I did contained a text box that said, "NOT TO SCALE".
I was surprised after doing one job and only using one of those $39.95 programs (a notch down from CA) that someone saw it and wanted to engage me to remodel their place solely because of the drawing.
I guess it was attention to detail and organization that sold them--so I keep after it. My software won't work under Vista and considering the cost I wasn't to happy with MS. So I got a guy to set up a dual boot (XP & Vista) after being told it couldn't be done.
Haven't tried plotting anything yet but..... Tyr