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Printing is Still Growing
People Want to Get Their Hands on It
HP’s Graphic Arts Summit took place in Rome last May to present new technologies in their new printer series, which include the HP Designjet T610 and T1100, and the Designjet Z6100. HP employees, managers and engineers came from all over the world to explain the new large-format printers to resellers, dealers and the press. GeoInformatics spoke to Carles Magrinyà, Worldwide Product Manager for the HP Designjet T-series, based in Barcelona, Spain, about the company’s latest technology. Magrinya: “The world is interested in our innovations, and we had hundreds of resellers in Rome.”
By Job van Haaften
As an introduction, Carles Magrinyà told us what he is working on at the moment for HP. Magrinyà: “The development of inks is an important issue, as are the technical management of projects, technical requirements, defining the market for our printers and the strategy we need to be following.”
Carles Magrinyà
Technical Developments
“In the near future I expect developments in inks. We’re checking on the technologies we are using and improving the good things, discarding the bad things. We now produce inks that are more resistant than before. They have a better level of water resistance and protection against fading. At the moment we are searching for pigments to improve the quality of printing on coated papers. The performance on coated papers was not close enough to what we wanted although we had already established good colours on plain paper. Improvements in durability and in performance on coated papers: that’s what we expect in the near future. There are also advances in design, managing workflow and better paper quality.”
Changes in the Market
“The technical market is starting to experiment more on materials, such as rigid materials for instance. Greater variety in materials demands new solutions in printing technologies. Demand is also growing for more photorealistic output and better control of the accuracy and quality of colours. There is a convergence between surveyors and engineers on the one side and the world of graphics and photography on the other side.”
“We think the market is driven by efficiency and less repetition of activities, so we’re streamlining everything we can. For example, we can save paper by rotating images in different sizes, fitting them like a puzzle. Just select the file and then the driver, and the interface gets it right with less paper loss. Printing full projects means printing a lot of files, and you want to send them over with one click. You can now print a full project via the job center without opening each and every file. The printer takes care of it all.”
HP Designjet T1100 family, 24 and
Evolution
“Integration and collaboration in teams is an important trend. People starting to work in this mode no longer need physical prints from the architect, engineer or surveyor; they get files and print what they need themselves. More distributed printing occurs, printing along the chain and from online plan rooms. The engineers and architects publish their files in progress in an online plan room. Every constructor working on electricity, steel, water pipes or other parts of a construction project can look at it and print from it. You select the file you want and print it with the specifications you want. There is growing use and demand for plug-ins for online plan rooms. This is being enabled thanks to the cooperation of HP with the developers of the software.”
Overlap
“The overlap of GIS with CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) and CAD (Computer Aided Design) is increasing. There is a lot of blur or overlap with GIS as most of the topography in GIS is used for construction infrastructure or buildings. This is particularly evident between CAE and GIS. CAD and GIS have less overlap. Users want more than a map that shows just altitude, land or sea, rock or sand. They
prefer an aerial-photograph-like presentation with a layer on top that combines various kinds of information. That requires photorealistic output so you can recognize familiar parts of the area and structures like buildings and bridges. This kind of output is a lot more recognizable than a map. This is a choice that didn’t exist before but now with the improvement in printers we can deliver the goods. This creates the need for the delivery of still better output.”
Visualization for Decision Making
Magrinyà stated: “The importance of CAD and GIS is still rising not only because of technological developments but also because of population growth. Population growth is still on the increase, which together with a growing economy, pushes the need for more infrastructure. People are more interested in what is happening in their neighbourhood and want to be involved in decision making. So if there are plans for new infrastructure or buildings they want to see what it will look like when it is built. Regarding visualization in general, the screens and the printers are getting better but it is still relatively cheap to print, cheaper than a flat screen. Of course HP works on screens and projections as well. Another reason to print is that people want to get their hands on it, they want to point out their ideas and mark things physically on a print as they look at it with a team.”
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