The times they keep a changing!

In the architecture and engineering world, for instance, it may have taken hours, if not days, to hand copy plans for a new building or overall drawings for an entire neighborhood. Using a plotter, a computer printer for printing vector graphics, both engineers and designers were able to speed up the process of getting hard copy plans. In operation, a plotter gives a hard copy of the output that is printed on various sizes of plotter paper rolls. In fact, it draws pictures on a paper using a pen. Although these plotters have been used in computer-aided design and other applications, these plotters have generally been replaced with wide-format conventional printers.

These wide-format conventional printers use bulk engineering papers that come in large format sizes. As a result, many firms and city offices look for the best bulk prices for bulk engineering paper, blueprint paper, and others. And while we are becoming more accustomed to a digital world, a paper print out still serves a real purpose in many situations.
Consider some of these facts and figures about the equipment and the supplies that many professionals rely on:

• 3,500 square feet a month of printing output is the average that most of today’s architectural and engineering offices use.
• There are 109,748 architects in the U.S., according to reports from the 2016 Survey of Architectural Registration Boards.
• The wide format printers global market is projected to reach $7.2 billion by the year 2022.
• With 17,241 architects, California has more architects than any other state as of 2016.
• The state with the second-most architects, New York has 10,734 in this field.
• 33% of new paper is made with recycled fiber. In fact, the U.S. paper recovery rate reached an all-time high of 67.2% in the year 2016. This is the third consecutive yearly increase

Invented in 1953, the first plotter was an important advancement. Today, while some plotters are still used, there are an increasing number of printing options available to engineers, city planners, and architects. As the nation continues to attempt to address failing infrastructure needs, it should come as no surprise that there are a growing number of needs for large format printing.