Text Engraving in R14

[kolias]

I’m using Acad R14 and made the control panel for my cnc with various square / round openings for the pushbuttons and the letters describing the function of each button. The control panel is a piece of aluminum 8.5”x21”x1/8” and includes openings / letters for 16 buttons.

 

Everything turns out good but have problem engraving the letters because the tool takes more steps than necessary to engrave each letter; for example to do the letter “O” it does the top part and then it does the bottom part and normally this should have been one operation.

 

I wonder if there is a setting in R14 to optimize the text or perhaps a font that is better for engraving than others. Now I’m using either Arial or Verdana 1/4" high

 

In addition, when I export my file to DXF, the options are ASCII or Binary and I choose ASCII and the Decimal Places range is 0-16 and I choose 6. Are these settings appropriate?

[JD Mather]

Any CNC software that I have seen has better text engraving (g-code) creation tools than using AutoCAD.

[kolias]

Your statement is not always true; I have MastercamX5 and although its one of the best CAD/CAM software its ability to produce a half decent text is very poor. So I use it to produce my dwg and then export the dxf to Acad to do the text.