Re: why is my plotter using color ink?

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Call HP support and they will walk you through the process of setting up a special configuration that will allow your printer to just use black ink only. This eliminates the need to mess with the pen settings. You will give this setup a different name (mine is called HP100-24x36black) and it will show up on the list of available plotters when you hit the plot button in autocad. You will still be able to use the standard plot for your printer if you ever want to print in color. Carolyn

You might try changing all of the layer colors to white, then plot. After plotting use the undo command until the layer colors return.

That's a lot of unnecessary work, when all that's really needed is to map all drawing colors to Pen 7 in the plotting dialog. ___

What purpose does [rea] serve in this sequence, as it happens anyway after the layer command & again during plotting. Also - this system only works if everything is set to colour bylayer.
FWIW I'd have thought that between [plot] & [profit] should be [layerp] so that your drawing is still usable onscreen.
Matthew

I have a Calcomp Techjet, which has the same issue. It's an orphan printer, but we found a paid tech support company which advised us to configure AutoCAD to use the printer under a different name. He directed me to use a plotter model which had similar features, but was B/W only. (Sorry, I don't recall the model, we have switched to another plotter)
Note that the trick of setting up a pen configuration called "Monochrome" didn't help us. But it might help you, just edit the pen configuration, and highlight all the pens (highlight the first one, then scroll to the bottom of the list, and select the last one while holding down shift... everything in the middle should now be highlighted). Then just change that pen to use color #7(Black/White)
If the model number or pen color trick I just described doesn't work, you might just let the color inks run out, leaving only the black ink. Then just use that cartridge when you want b/w so you don't waste any more color cartridges.
Joe

Gray is acomplished by mixing equal amounts of all the colors so, grayscale will use a lot of "color" ink try to set your plotter to "monochrome.ctb" in printer setup and it should start to use black ink only

Well, with the drawing I happened to have open while testing this (so I didn't skip a step), it did not regenerate. You're correct that it doesn't need it when plotting anyways, but it does give a level of reassurance that the program has done what you want it to do & it only puts off that retirement by a few more seconds. Time for that first pint of beer to warm up to a more drinkable temperature.
As for this working only with objects set to bylayer, well, of course that's how it is, because I am an intolerant bastard who believes that's the way everything has to be. Every object must have it's colors, linetypes, etc set to bylayer. Anyone who does otherwise should be punished by being ground up for fertilizer. ;-)
Kelvin