Why does Explode Text give odd results ?

[nurquhar]

I am working with text in an Arial font. At the end of the day I need to it convert to lines, arcs or polylines so the laser cutting man can produce his 'G' code for his machine. ie I just need the profiles of each letter.

The irksum problem is when I use "explode text" from the express tools menu it adds some extra lines which are'nt part of the letters profile. See the attachment showing the sample text before and after the explode operation.

I guess these could be edited out one at a time but that would be a drag since I have a whole A4 sheet of text to do.

Is there anyway to stop the lines being created or automaticaly remove them after ?

[hendie]

probably not but have you tried turing off fillmode before exploding ?

[nurquhar]

Using fillmode = 0 does not seem to have any effect. Any other options ?

[Hedgehog]

I don't think there's much you can do about this... if you look at the way the exploded text is formed you'll see that it's a series of simple boundaries that go to make up the shape of each letter, which is fine when it's filled solid... when you look at the outline it's showing just this & you'll have to edit each letter... or you could do a net search for the font you want rather than a filled one.

[NBC]

instead of exploding text that is filled, try setting TEXTFILL to 0

[nurquhar]

textfill = 0, same problem, still get the lines.

[nurquhar]

I have found an arial.shx font on the internet. I have put in my "support" folder where simplex.shx is but I can't see it as on option in the Mtext editor. How should I load this extra font ?

[Cymro]

Try This

Draw rectangle round exploded text

create a temporary layer and make it current

bpoly and select all internal islands including the rectangle,

isolate current layer and you should have only the boundary lines.

That is the quickest way I could think of

[riga]

I have found an arial.shx font on the internet. I have put in my "support" folder where simplex.shx is but I can't see it as on option in the Mtext editor. How should I load this extra font ?

You have to save the arial.shx font in
PROGRAMS/AUTOCAD XXXX/FONTS folder.
If you have an autocad session opened close it an restart Autocad

Here it is after explode text
Looks like what you are looking for

[Cad64]

:o riga, how are you able to explode text cleanly like that? :unsure:

[riga]

:o riga, how are you able to explode text cleanly like that? :unsure:

Oh, I should have been more clear.
I've also downloaded the arial.shx font, which is already outlined, then using the explode text command (_txtexp) from express tools the result is the one I posted

[JD Mather]

so the laser cutting man can produce his 'G' code for his machine.

The best results I have had is to create the text in the G-code creation software. It is optimized for this process. Give the laser cutting man a note for the text, font and position and let him do the the text his CAM software.

[SLW210]

Arial.shx explodes nicely. Thanks Riga. :thumbsup:

[nurquhar]

I have put arial.shx font file that I found at http://www.xanadu.cz/en/download.asp?file=Arial in C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2005\Fonts

However when use mtext to add a new text and I look in the fonts drop down all the arial type fonts I see are marked as TT (true Type). Am I still missing a step ?

[SLW210]

Go to Format>Text Style

[riga]

SLW you are welcome. Glad you like it :)

nurquhar:
in FORMAT > TEXT STYLE you can see the font arial.shx?
if not check in OPTION > FILES > Support File Search Path
to verify that you have in it the path
C:\Programs Files\AutoCAD 2005\fonts

[SLW210]

You will also need to restart AutoCAD for it to show up in the available fonts.

[Alan Cullen]

Fuccaro wrote a great tutorial on this. This is actually a .doc file, but I renamed it to comply with file size. So rename it back to Exploding texts.doc :

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