I need a huge favor with text

I've got a customer that I'm working with where we need to route some text on panel goods. However, as we all know, when you explode text it don't look too pretty since you lose the fancy curves and such.

That said, can anyone help me with a solution to smoothing out the curves that doesn't require hours of tracing each letter with a spline? Any way that I can get some vector linework or maybe politely ask one of you fine AutoCAD users (yes, I'm buttering you up) to help out?

Please.

What font are you working with?

Exploding text have been asked about before, the thread below is one example - don't know about the faceting though..

http://cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?t=42145&highlight=exploding+text

New Times Roman font.

Exploded and still retained all the curves. Some editing was required to get rid of overlapping lines.

Here are the font styles:

Franklin Gothic

Myriad Pro Condensed

Times New Roman Italic

Brush

Castellar

Gill Sans Light Shadow

Onyx

The fonts will be at least 1-1/4" tall and larger, so any jaggedness is going to be visible.

Exploded text may look badly on the screen but print fine.

This won't be printed. I have to send this out to our CNC machine and have it milled into a panel.

The image I posted above was used as part of a new title block and border. The letter height was 0.8125" and it printed fine.

Some, not all of the letters, after exploding had areas where there were overlapping lines. I trimmed these out and did a pedit. Each letter is a polylined entity to itself. For our purposes I created a block for ease of insertion into the drawing sheet.

I would be willing to send you a copy of the logo drawing if you are interested. PM me with your email address.

you should use solidworks for this.in this program you dont need explode. just select the text and extrude.

I just have to laugh when someone makes a suggestion to just go out and buy another very expensive piece of software to solve a problem. Like we all are rolling in dough at the moment. Come on guys.

im not saying what you have to buy.you can download trial version.

it makes me lough then you guys think that autocad the best program for all purpose. you dont even try to use smth diferent. but im not going to judge you cause everybodo have right to chose.

i was using acad for 2 years and i thought the same too.

but then i tried solidwoks i was amazed how simple to use this program, you can make the same things much faster.(im talking abaut 3d)

and you dont need explode text or do smth else.

so now for 3d im using just solidworks.

We use the programs we have dude! AutoCAD is not the best program for a lot of things but it may very well suit our immediate (i.e. - the company's) needs. Once in a while a problem comes up and we try to use what we have even if we have to fudge it a bit. AutoDesk hasn't shipped a product with a "Magic" button yet.

You did notice that the OP is using AutoCAD 2008 didn't you? So I gave him a way of doing what he wanted to do with the software he has. He doesn't have to download or buy a new program. Other people have verified the technique works.

We use Microvellum with AC and it works pretty easy once you get the hang of what to do with the text. I have to explode the text andthen trim all the crossed lines out and rejoin and then assign tooling and it writes the G-code for the Weeke! Alot probably depends on machine software and what you are writing with. More info might help. good luck and have a nice day!

I just have to laugh when someone makes a suggestion to just go out and buy another very expensive piece of software to solve a problem. Like we all are rolling in dough at the moment.

ReMark, get out of my head. I had the same thought.

The Illustrator option in the thread that Tiger posted looks promising (thanks Tiger!). We have a student version of it and the option to export to a DXF is on there so I'll give that a shot.

All of the text that I explode with the Express Tools command comes out real choppy when the letters are between 1-1/4" and 2" tall. The "Hide" then "WMFOUT" option gives better results, but it's still choppy.

Oddly enough, we actually are going to buy Solidworks or Inventor within the next month, but I need to do this now, so waiting for that isn't an option.

Hi SuperCad,

Here is the answer with the System variable;

Command Line:textqlty

Command Line:you can enter number up to 100 then

Command Line:regenall

Enjoy it man.

Tharwat

I tried teh TEXTQLTY but it only made it a little better. The text was still choppy. I did the Illustrator thing and it worked perfectly. If you have access to Illustrator, or know someone who has it, use that. The results are fantastic.

Oddly enough, we actually are going to buy Solidworks or Inventor within the next month.

I would highly recommend Inventor. If your used to AutoCAD it works nicely with it.

Even though I use Inventor a lot, I would be lost without my Plain Vanilla Autocad even for 3D.

KC

Here is a utility (Beta version) for inserting text based geometry directly into AutoCAD 2007+. All curves in the geometry are spline based; though remain compatible with Piecewise Cubic Bezier curves.

Not all Font definitions are compatible with the “As Region” option.

This is essentially an open source project http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=31435.0

(You will need to sign up as a member to view the link)

To load:

Command: Netload

Browse for Text2Geom.dll

To run command:

Command: t2g

Disclaimer:

As with any beta software, the user should exercise sensible caution.

THE AUTHOR PROVIDES THIS PROGRAM "AS IS" AND WITH ALL FAULTS.

THE AUTHOR SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF

MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR USE. THE AUTHOR

DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE OPERATION OF THE PROGRAM WILL BE

UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE.

TNRI.dwg

T2G.zip

ReMark help!!! I was importing some dgn files into 2010 mechanical and I could see most of the text fine. I couldn't see the dgn "mtext" fractions, but I could see the dimension fractions. Got to messing around with fontalt and fontmap and the acad.fmp file. I did the substitution deal with .fmp file substituting some of the dgn shx files with simplex.shx.

At one point did the "." thing on fontalt and fontmap variables. None of that worked for making the fractions visible. Soooooo, I put everything back like it was in autocad before, meaning I took out the substitutions in the acad.fmp file(s) and I set fontalt and fontmap back to what they where, and guess what....now I can't import a dgn file and see ANY text at all. What did I do?