Mrs. Maria Cristina Pacciarella
Hewlett-Packard Customer Care Center DesignJet Team Europe, Middle East & Africa
Pacciarella Technical Support Specialist, Teamleader (Commercial Hardcopy Support Devision)

"If we cannot understand the cause for the discrepancy between the required plot and the actual one, we normally ask for the PLT or PRN files, in which we find clues as to whether the correct plot settings were selected. With NORMICA we are able to recognize our client's drawing immediately. If we do not have the CAD system used by our client, which is frequently the case, NORMICA is the only possibility to open the plot files. We do everything over the phone. A client may for example tell me that he "wants the file to be plotted this way but it simply wouldn't". In many cases the user at first assumes that the cause for the misplots can be found in the hardware. We can tell, however, that the reason for incorrect drawings is an insufficiently defined plot configuration. In order to be able to offer a solution to our clients, we need to take a look at their digital data. If a plot had been created with the help of, for example, AutoCAD, we also ask for the original files to check them. For a number of other types of files, however, we lack the CAD system used to create the drawing so that we require the plot files to help with this sort of problems.

NORMICA enables us to make the plot files visible on the screen, which is of great value to us. Thus we can convince the user that the selection he is sure to have made might not be supported by the application or the respective drivers. NORMICA helps us circling the problem and to find by what it was caused. With NORMICA we can verify our client's statements, for example: "I selected DIN A0, nevertheless the paper is cut off" or "The drawing is somehow twisted though I didn't select rotation". By sending us their plot files, our clients give us the chance to become acquainted with their profiles more easily. What is important for us is that we are able to visualize the PLT file in order to recognize mistakes and problems as well as misunderstandings and wrong settings.

Our business is the so-called output of the drawing. If we can offer our clients good answers, explanations and solutions, the occurrence of a mistake for a second time can be avoided. Our clients' benefit is a faster finishing of their projects, our advantage lies in the fact that we avoid further questions to our support department concerning the same subject. Thus both sides save time and money. I systematically trace every single clue in order to detect the actual error. The more possibilities there are to analyze a file, the easier it becomes to solve a problem. Before we started using NORMICA we were not able to visualize the files and were forced to plot them. With the help of the plot we subsequently tried to understand the client's statements and to find out where the problem was. In other words, all we had for evaluation and error detection was the final print-out.

NORMICA gives us the opportunity to move the cursor over a line and thereby examine the pen properties using the Tool-tip feature. Until then, we were not capable of definitely telling "O. k., there we have pen width 0,25". Neither were we able to quickly rotate the drawing and to correct some errors. Now we can definitely say: "O. k., the error is in the PLT file". Thus it is no longer necessary to plot files without previously viewing them. The employment of NORMICA helped us in once more qualitatively enhance our performance.

NORMICA is easy to install, and so is the usage. The documentation is very thoroughly elaborated, the userfriendliness of this product is extremely convincing. We would like to compliment the developers at IT BASE. "