SHX vs. TrueType

[Pineapple]

Hello,

I'm curious how frequently SHX fonts are used in CAD nowadays, especially for things like dimensions and general notes. It's my understanding that SHX fonts are mostly for old pen plotters who would have trouble with TrueType fonts. Are most things printer on Raster printers now? If so, is TrueType acceptable in the industry? I have noticed that when I print TrueType fonts to PDF, it seems to bump up the filesize and create a lot of small lines instead of a solid fill.

Thanks

-Dan

[ReMark]

I think a lot of CAD users still use .shx files rather than TrueType fonts. Unless you need some fancy styles, fonts that are easy to read and don't balloon drawing file size are still the best bet. But, it's all a matter of personal preference. Right? Use whatever makes you happy just as long as the end user or client can read it. I would recommend against using Gothic style lettering though.

[Alan Cullen]

We recently changed from SHX to TTF fonts. Mainly because they print better, and allow better control over symbol codes.

[Pineapple]

Thanks for the input. I think I'm going to stick with SHX fonts for my dimensions and notes for now and use TTF only for my Title Block. Thanks again!

[wehaveaproblem]

A couple of notes on this:
The SHX files were the original way CAD did fonts so have been used by AutoCAD for as long as it has been around. When they decided to run AutoCAD in Windows they had to add code to allow the Windows TTF fonts to work.
The SHX files are much better as they are made up of lines and not a raster image by windows. I had problems years ago with some of the TTF files going a bit strange and causing hassle (especially CityBluePrint), but since we are now on 2008 version they behave much better.

Unfortunately our company is changing from isocp2.shx to ARIAL.ttf. and have noticed some problems:

On one of our A3 printers, when scaling down a drawing from A0 to A3. The spacing of the TTF font increases and start to overlap with other things and creap outside of viewports, missing off the last one or two letters!!

When copying or moving a piece of MTEXT it sometimes leave bits of it behind and bits across the screen, I call them skid marks! A Regen gets rid of them but they should not really be happening. Perhaps we need better graphics cards in our PC's.

The text goes all blocky when you zoom out a bit.

Auto Object Snaps seem to snap to TTF fonts differently that SHX fonts. Can get annoying when you click a line near a piece of MTEXT with TTF font as it snaps to it more oftern (if you have 'ins' onsap set to on) than if it was SHX font.

TTF font only have two line weights, Bold and Normal. If you are using SHX the boldness/lightness can be changed to suit the colour setting in the ctb file. We don't use object lineweights so not sure of the differences there.

Hope this helps a little.

[SLW210]

Unfortunately our company is changing from isocp2.shx to ARIAL.ttf. and have noticed some problems:

If you will search on CADTutor, you will find an ARIAL.shx font. It is much better than the TTF.

[Pineapple]

Actually, I've kinda had a tough time finding decent SHX fonts outside ROMANS. My company manufactures windows for commercial buildings. We deal a lot with architect's so I considered using a "handwriting" style font. However a lot of them seem a little too "comic bookish" for us and most of the ones I found were TTF anyway. We'd like to use something other than a standard AutoCAD font though. Any suggestions for a professional looking SHX font?