Draw and edit texts

The program stores text in the drawings as text objects where one row of text is a single object, or as Mtext elements which can contain multiple rows. The program draws the text in the selected location according to the current text settings.

Text objects have the most properties out of all the objects in the program. These properties include:

  • Font – The font defines what different characters look like. CAD fonts are stored in FTF files, and the program can also use AutoCAD fonts (SHX files) and Windows TrueType fonts (TTF files). Each font file contains the description of every character of one font.

    For each text style, select the font that the style uses. For more information, see Manage text styles.

    You can also create and edit the program's own fonts.

    Note: If you use TrueType or SHX fonts and send your drawings to a third party, note that the text only looks like you want it to look like if the recipient's computer has the same font files.

    Unicode is an international standard, which defines the character sets for most common languages in the world. Unicode standard is based on a 16 bit character set, which means that it can contain over 65000 different characters. Some fonts contain Unicode compliant characters.

    The code syntax is \U+nnnn where n is the hexadecimal code of the character.

    You can use hexadecimal codes when adding text to any text or attribute command. For example, to enter the code of capital A of the latin character set in the TEXT command, do as follows:

    >TEXT

    Start point: <point>

    Rotation angle: 0<Enter>

    Text: \U+0041

    TrueType fonts are installed to the Windows operating system. After the installation the fonts are available in all Windows applications that support the use of TrueType fonts. Several TrueType fonts are provided with Windows and many application install their own fonts. Program installs TrueType versions of its old FTF fonts, but these should not be used in the drawings. Use the FTF fonts instead.

    When using TrueType fonts you should keep in mind that not all users have the same fonts installed in their computers. If you expect to share your drawings with other users, it is adviced that you use popular fonts like Arial and Times New Roman, both of which are provided with Windows. The value of the system variable TTFILLMODE determines whether TrueType fonts are displayed filled (1) or not (0). Due to the fact that TrueType fonts are often very complicated, using them might slow down the display generation and printing.

    Program is provided with three different Cyrillic fonts. Only CYRILWIN is compatible with Windows character sets. In addition several TrueType fonts contain a Cyrillic character set. You can use TrueType fonts in Mtext objects. If you want to see Cyrillic character in the command line and dialogs as well, add a Russian keyboard layout in the Windows regional settings (for further information on how to do this, refer to the Windows documentation).

    It is recommended that you consider compatibility with other systems when deciding what to use.

  • Size – The text size is the maximum height of the characters. You can set the size in the text settings.

    The program sets the actual size of the text as a multiple of the size and the scale of the drawing. So, the program draws a five millimeter tall text in a 1:10 scale drawing as 50 millimeters tall. When you print the drawing, the text is 5 mm tall.

    If you edit the text in a scaled drawing, enter the actual size as the size. If you want the printed text to be 10 mm tall and the scale of the drawing is 1:10, enter 100 as the size.

  • Width – You can change the width of text objects. The default value is 1. If you want to make the text wider, enter a larger value. If you want to make the text narrower, enter a smaller width factor.

  • Oblique angle – You can tilt the text to an angle. The default angle is 0. A positive value tilts the text right, and a negative value tilts the text left.

  • Alignment – When you insert text into the drawing, the program asks you to define an insertion point. You can later define where in the text the insertion point is located. The alignment remains when you edit the contents of the text. You can edit the alignment of the text object in the Properties window.