When the pen table option "Non-rasterized priority sort mode" is set, the primitive graphics exported by the display system are sorted prior to printing. This technique only works when printing in non-rasterized mode. The non-rasterized priority sort mode does not work when printing rendered views, nor when printing to raster printer drivers such as tiff.pltcfg, cals.pltcfg, jpeg.pltcfg, or png.pltcfg.

When using the non-rasterized priority sort mode, elements not assigned a priority are printed immediately. Elements assigned a priority are printed afterwards in order of increasing priority.

Non-rasterized priority sort mode has the advantage of working without regard to the dimensions of the source elements. Elements may be sorted across any reference boundary, and the components of complex and compound elements may be prioritized individually.

Depending on the number of elements assigned priority, the sorted graphics list may consume a significant amount of memory.

When non-rasterized priority sort mode is enabled in the pen table, certain printing features are disabled. These include OLE objects always being rasterized when printing to the Windows printer driver, hardware/searchable text being disabled for text elements assigned priority, and elements affected by non-rectangular clip fences being clipped in software rather than by the plotter firmware. In some cases, this may result in changes to the printed output.