Text Thickness

Hello,

I have been having an issue with the way text displays. What appears to be random (I'm sure its not) text shows up slightly more bold than the text around it - despite all properties being identical. I cannot find any reason for the difference in appearance, which happens in model, paper, and a hard copy print out. If anyone has any clue why this might be going on it would help me out a bunch. I'm working on autocad 2009.

Thanks!

all text or just selected text? did you do the drawing or is it imported or created in an older version?

is it whole blocks of text or random letters?

what text style is it? (note: I didn't ask for font :wink: )

It's one or two entire blocks of mtext. It has happened to text i have created as well as text created in earlier versions. It happens on 10% of my drawings. The text height is correct, but it looks bold. I have seen the issue on our company text styles for scale factors 4, 12 and 24 - but i get the gut feeling this issue is independant of text style.

the biggest culprit in such situations is often a redefinition of the text style called 'standard' or something similar

can you do a global change on it all or will it not respond to that?

A few factors can come from this. Is it a TTF font or a SHX font that you're using?

it will not respond to editing globally or the stripmtext lisp by steve doman

im not quite sure what the difference is im using the default "arial" font

a TTF font is a Windows compatible font, which you cannot change the thickness. an SHX font is an AutoCAD compatible font in which the thickness CAN change by CTB/STB plot style, ByObject, or Layer thickness. when you say everything is identical, it truly has to be identical in ALL properties when using SHX fonts.

As for TTF, it shouldn't matter.

How can i tell the difference and how to I get a list of ALL properties?

Hello,

 

I have been having an issue with the way text displays. What appears to be random (I'm sure its not) text shows up slightly more bold than the text around it - despite all properties being identical. I cannot find any reason for the difference in appearance, which happens in model, paper, and a hard copy print out. If anyone has any clue why this might be going on it would help me out a bunch. I'm working on autocad 2009.

 

Thanks!

There is a known issue where a TTF with an elevation other than 0 will cause this. Even though properties may show an elevation of 0, type in 0 because a small value won't show especially if in arch units. You can select all, open properties, use the drop down to just use text or mtext, then change the Z values to 0.

TTF are still not perfect in AutoCAD, I gave up on them a few years ago as their advantages are out weighed by their disadvantages, for my use anyway. ymmv

rkent,

This seems to solve the problem for mtext. I should have payed more attention to the types of text this happens on. I am also seeing this on dimensions and multileaders, which do not appear to have an editable geometry. Any ideas how to change their Z value?

Thanks!

You could try selecting all dimensions and run the "Flatten" command (this is an Express command)

Good idea, but no luck.

Post a portion of the drawing with the offending dims. Let us know what the Text Style Name is and the font for that style.

The correct dimension is the 1'-6 3/8". The others are slightly more bold and this is best seen when zooming in and out or plotting. Text style is "SF24 (LC)" and the font is the default "Arial".

dim-issue.dwg

I found that sometimes the Z value does show 0, I just change it to say 10 and back to 0. That always seem to work. If soemone can figure out hwo to do teh same to dimensions, let me know

You can explode the dimensions and/or multileaders and either run the flatten command or set the z value to zero in the properties. i am still looking for a better way to do this though as this is time consuming.

Please don't start exploding things and especially not dimensions........

That is a solution that should be avoided where possible.

I just ran the flatten command on a dimension which I deliberately gave a z value of 500 with the move command .... (0,0,0 as base point to 0,0,500)

The result was that the dimension text returned to a thinner text resembling all the other text and dimensions.

You can explode the dimensions

That is a "right now solution" without any consideration for how much work is involved for somebody else or yourself included at a later date.

For some reason the flatten command does not work for me. Not sure why this is.

I have also run the flatten command ad it does not work. It is REALLY annoying, specially bad when people have not drawn on proper layers either. Why does Acad do this in any case?