Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published February 2007

Creating Text Styles

Contrary to how Microsoft Word® works, AutoCAD doesn't have a "Font" command by which to establish the look of your text. To establish the look of your text, you will need to create a Text Style.

Suggestion 1: Don't modify the text style named Standard, make your own.

Suggestion 2: When naming the text style, use your company initials as the prefix to make your style obvious in the list.

Instruction to Create a Text Style

1. From the Styles toolbar, click Text Style to open the Text Styles dialog box. You could also click FormatText Style from the menus.
2. Click the "New" button, then enter a name for the text style and click OK. In this example, I'll name it ATG_Notes.
3. From the Font Name dropdown list, select a font.

Notes

Fonts with the .SHX extensions are native AutoCAD fonts (these are compiled Shape files, thus the SHX). Fonts with the TT logo are Microsoft's TrueType fonts, just like you would use in a Word document. Do NOT use fonts with the @ sign at the beginning; it adversely affects the rotation of text in Mtext objects.

If you are using a TrueType font, you can specify the Font Style of Regular, Italic, or Bold, and for some, Bold Italic.

And now a word about "Big Font" – A Big Font does not generate monstrous sized characters. The term big font, essentially, identifies the size of the "bucket" AutoCAD uses to hold all the characters for that character set. Look at it this way: The English language has a 36 alpha-numeric collection, along with all those characters above the number keys on your keyboard, roughly 50 characters. For our analogy, let's say all 50 characters (and their assorted capitalization, etc.) could fit into a gallon bucket. For those character sets, Autodesk parsed out a normal sized "bucket" to hold the standard collection.

Foreign language versions of AutoCAD, however… specifically the Asian languages… contain a significantly larger collection of characters. They may need a 5 gallon bucket to hold the full spectrum of characters for that language. But there are also companies (as well as individuals making their own character sets) that have added a wider variety of alpha-numeric characters. The font named Special.shx is one of those that some of you may have encountered. Consequently, for specific foreign language (and those customized character sets), Autodesk parsed out larger than normal "bucket" to hold all the characters, and called those character sets "Big Fonts".

(See the Fix-It Table in my June 2006 article for more on working with drawings using big fonts).

4. Set the Height to 0. If this value is 0, when you use the Dtext (Single Line Text) or Mtext commands, you will be prompted to enter a height. This allows for maximum flexibility when adding text to your drawing.
5. Set an Effect if desired. Or not.

Effects: Generally speaking, only the SHX fonts support all the effects.

Upside Down – Not sure why folks don't rotate the text 180 degrees rather than using the Upside Down effect, but that's what it will do.

Backwards – This one could actually be useful. When the text is plotted backwards and printed to what we called "sticky-back" paper, then applied to a window, when viewed from the opposite side the text would read properly.

Vertical – This is not text rotated to 90 degrees but character sits above the next. When you check this box, you will see an example in the Preview area to see what I mean.

6. The Width factor can be a value between 0.01 and… some number you probably wouldn't use. OK, it's 100.
7. The Oblique Angle can be a positive or negative value to slant the characters as necessary.
8. After making the desired adjustments to the text style properties, click Apply, then Close. If Apply is grayed out, it simply means you probably pressed Enter when entering a value. Click Close.

That text style is now current and is displayed in the Styles toolbar. Keep in mind, however, that text styles are drawing-specific. I would suggest you add the necessary text style(s) to your template so you will be able to use them on each new drawing you create.

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