topic Re: Tilted Text in Collaboration with other software

Tilted Text

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:45:05 GMT

Hello
I'm working with a new engineer and he sent me some of his details.
I've imported his dwg with several const details into AC12(all current) and some (maybe 20%;more in the shown example) of the text is tilted at different angles.
So I selected the text, corrected the tilts made some basic changes to the
details (and all is fine and stays fine in the .pln) then saved as .dwg using the "Save for further editing" option translator and the newly created dwg has the tilted text again as shown below.
I don't have the shx fonts and have to say "skip all". Is that what's causing the tilting?
Or is there another known issue with dwg import/export text tilting?
I should add he's using ACad 14 and all the text looks correct on his screen.
lec

Re: Tilted Text

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:58:11 GMT

Thought I should show that some of the details, of the same dwg with text tilting issues, don't have the text tilting problem.
So there is a inconsistent text tilting problem within the same dwg I created with the corrected pln.
And should add I've tried several times to create new dwg and each time some of the text is tilted.
lec

Re: Tilted Text

Thomas Holm — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:16:59 GMT

To me it looks like it's not the text that's tilted, it's some of the text blocks.
And those text blocks are labels.
And they seem to be tilted just as much as the leader line's closest part.

I would guess that if you correct a text block's tilt without changing the tilt of the line it's tied to, the DWG translator will assume the text should tilt just like the line, as that is the standard, and so you're back at square one after each translation.

I may be wrong, sorry if that's the case.

Edited:
You say the DWG you created still has the tilt. Does it show in Autocad?

Re: Tilted Text

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:31:08 GMT

Hi Thomas
Thanks for the reply.
Very observant.
I had known it was the text block that was tilted and that is what I had corrected.
I failed to make note of that in posting.

However that made me look closer and now realize that only the text that is in text blocks are tilted. No regular text is effected as such.
I had taken a quick look at the engineers screen as a feedback loop test and did not at that time realize I had re-tilt going on, so I did not look that closely and he was busy with something else with the Friday rush to close down for our 3day weekend. Now on Tuesday I will check more closely to see if it is only when I open repaired dwg.
But if it is still a problem in Acad, the solution may be simply replacing all
re-tilted text blocks with plain text.

New posting shows how random it is though. Two drawings next to each other in same repaired dwg, one having no problem with tilted text blocks but the other drawing having all but one text block rotated.
Very weird.
Seems so random.
Thanks again Thomas
lec
ps
Is this a total anomaly, or has this issue been seen before?

Re: Tilted Text

Karl Ottenstein — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:34:12 GMT

Tangential to the problem ... you mentioned you did not have the SHX fonts (which those darn AutoCAD guys keep using instead of TrueType, even though they were invented for pen plotters!) ...

As Djordje and others have mentioned in the past, if you install the free Audodesk DWG TrueView application, you'll get a folder with the SHX fonts. Copy that folder some place useful for future reference during import.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=6703438

And, with TrueView, you can verify the appearance of incoming and outgoing dwgs. (For Mac users, there is the less capable, but also free eDrawings ... but no shx fonts. Just zip and copy the font folder from a PC.)

Cheers,
Karl

Re: Tilted Text

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:36:17 GMT

Update;
Thanks Karl that was very helpful.
Now looking at the original .dwg from engineer with Autodesk True View 2010, I realize that his file appears to be ok.
It is in AC12(all current) that that text blocks (as Thomas noted) that were tilted.
The output dwg file opened in AC12 (text blocks)(with shx fonts) also look tilted,however opened in True View 2010, they seem fine
although I have yet to see my output.dwg file in Acad14, (Tues).

Looks like a shortcoming of AC12?
Has this been seen before?
Reported as bug maybe?

lec

Re: Tilted Text

Thomas Holm — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:21:49 GMT

lec1212 wrote:
...It is in AC12(all current) that that text blocks (as Thomas noted) that were tilted.
The output dwg file opened in AC12 (text blocks)(with shx fonts) also look tilted,however opened in True View 2010, they seem fine
although I have yet to see my output.dwg file in Acad14, (Tues)....

Hi Lec,
Being stubborn and nerdy, I maintain that the selected items are not Archicad text blocks, they are Labels. And I still think that could be the key to the issue (which I've never heard of before), because the DWG translator handles them separately from ordinary texts. There is a setting in the translator (se attached image) that you might experiment with. If that doesn't work, you could try the workaround Explode (explode the labels to text and lines before exporting).

As for the .shx fonts, as I've written before somewhere, you might want to know that AFAIK Autocad MTEXT blocks doesn't use them. The multi-line MTEXT command uses the TrueType (.ttf) representations of the same fonts instead, and they are located in the Windows font folder (installed by TrueView too, I think). Only one-liners created by Autocad's ancient TEXT command use the .shx fonts.
As for Autocad's label/leader texts, I'm not sure, but I would guess the situation is the same - one-liners use .shx and multiliners use .ttf.

Whatever the case, I don't think the fonts have anything to do with this tilt issue. Check out how the different label's leader lines are tilted.
Edited:
This might be a shortcoming of Archicad's translator if it assumes that the leader line closest to the text block sets the rotation of the label text (it looks to me that the label with no tilt has a [very short] line that is level). BUt you'll have to experiment some more to find out!

It would be interesting to see a screen dump of the detail with tilt, as seen in Autocad or Trueview.

Re: Tilted Text

Karl Ottenstein — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:22:46 GMT

Thomas wrote:
As for the .shx fonts, as I've written before somewhere, you might want to know that AFAIK Autocad MTEXT blocks doesn't use them. It uses the TrueType (.ttf) representations of the same fonts instead, and they are located in the Windows font folder (installed by TrueView too, I think). Only one-liners created by Autocad's ancient TEXT command use the .shx fonts.

Thanks for that, Thomas. I must have missed, or forgotten, your earlier posts.

Cheers,
Karl

Re: Tilted Text

Thomas Holm — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:42:51 GMT

Karl wrote:
Thanks for that, Thomas. I must have missed, or forgotten, your earlier posts.

No problem, Karl.
Archicad's DWG importer asks for the .shx files anyway, it seems. And other info (perhaps transformations like tilt amount) and line types etc is stored in these .shx files too.

Archicad replaces .shx fonts with Truetype fonts of the same name, if they are present in the system. That's why it's useful to have the .ttf files installed.

And please note, those Windows TrueType .ttf fonts will work in MacOSX too. Just drag them into your ~/Library/Fonts folder!

Re: Tilted Text

Erika Epstein — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:59:00 GMT

A bit confused here. I have Trueview installed on my pc. In my fonts folder I see 'MT Extra', not MTEXT. Is this what you, Thomas, are referring to?

Re the .shx folder, where do I find that?

Re: Tilted Text

Thomas Holm — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:12:58 GMT

Erika wrote:
A bit confused here. I have Trueview installed on my pc. In my fonts folder I see 'MT Extra', not MTEXT. Is this what you, Thomas, are referring to?

Nope. Maybe I wasn't clear.

MT Extra is one of several fonts.

MTEXT is a command issued in Autocad (if you use the keyboard option) to create a text block with more than one line.

Re the .shx folder, where do I find that?

.shx is a file format (-extension, like .pln for Archicad), not a folder.

The file format is used by Autocad for vector 'shapes' of various kinds, like line types. In the early days, Autocad could only recognize fonts in .shx format. Nowadays, it can use True Type (.ttf) fonts like most programs.

You frequently get .shx files along with .dwgs from Autocad.

It may be convenient if you collect those files in a folder, to point to when Archicad's translator asks for them. That's what I was referring to.

Re: Tilted Text

Erika Epstein — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:39:35 GMT

Thank you Thomas. I did a search for .shx and found thousands of fonts on my computer. I started to put them in a folder. Yes, some are duplicates.

Re: Tilted Text

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:03:45 GMT

Hi
Thomas wrote:"Being stubborn and nerdy, I maintain that the selected items are not Archicad text blocks, they are Labels."
Not stubborn or nerdy.
My blunder.
I used the term "text blocks" to mean test blocks in the labels and plain text to be regular text whether single line or multi line text not in label.
I see now, that caused more confusion.

Now I see from Karl's and your posts that this is more complicated than I had imagined.
I reopened the original .dwg in AC12 and noted that the length of the leader line did NOT correlate to the degree in which the LABEL was tilted.
So at least that variable seems to have been corralled.
The translator settings; “Custom>Label>Convert labels to Leaders IS and I believe was checked all along.
Screen shot of Original dwg from engineer as seen by T.V. 2010 below;
and Output to dwg as seen by T.V. 2010 in next post.
lec

Re: Tilted Text

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:05:17 GMT

Semi corrected (other issues abound) output to dwg as seen by T.V.2010

If this tilting was a couple of details no big deal.
However this engineer and I are planning full integration of details back and forth, so I appreciate all the help for sure to have a long term solution.
So I'll look into other comments made, such as "explode" before output to dwg.
I'll have to see how that works for him.

Some of the other comments seem over my head at the moment.
But I'll keep trying.
Thanks!
lec

Re: Tilted Text

Thomas Holm — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:20:56 GMT

lec1212 wrote:
...I reopened the original .dwg in AC12 and noted that the length of the leader line did NOT correlate to the degree in which the LABEL was tilted.
So at least that variable seems to have been corralled.
The translator settings; “Custom>Label>Convert labels to Leaders IS and I believe was checked all along.

As always, the devil is in the details.
It's obvious that ArC and AuC treat these things differently.

– I guessed that the tilt, not length, of the closest leader line would correlate to the degree of tilt of the label text. I might be wrong. Your engineer could perhaps make sure that that line is untilted in a test file for you to import?

– What happens if you uncheck the Convert Leaders to Labels setting before you import to Archicad?

Re: Tilted Text

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:24:53 GMT

Hi Thomas
Well you sure are right that the "devils in the details".
One simple UNclick the switch and life is good on the range again.
You were right, it does not appear to be related to fonts.
Thanks for all the insight though, I think I have a little better idea now how to set deal with font issues in Acad>AC>Acad

It was; Translator>Settings in Selected Translator>Custom Functions>Save Extras>Label>and then UNcheck; Convert Labels to Leaders.
I made a wrong assumption (even after you showed me the "switch") that it was to be checked. Hindsight always being 20-20, that was dumb of me.
So now, when either bringing in a dwg to AC12 or back out to Acad.dwg all looks quite normal. Horray,Horray.

I had already known engineers screen/details did not have issues with tilt, so knew it had to be in translation somewhere either in or out phase.

To complicate things, Engineer has a compilation of details he has drawn and collected over the yrs which have many different shx's or ttf font's (as I now know), some in labels some with leaders which translator kept asking for, so that just added to my confused state, once I got the shx fonts from Acad and tried to satisfy the (seemingly endless) translator's request for more specific fonts, things seemed even more confusing.

Thanks so much for all your stay-with-it attention to details!
I don't yet get all of your font wisdom, but a little less fog now.

Life is good again.
Hope things go well for you.
Happy Trails.
lec

Re: Tilted Text

Erika Epstein — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:58:52 GMT

lec,
Remember you can always bring in the dwgs and place them as an external drawing and right onto the layout. This has the advantage, of not bringing in all the dwg's attributes and it will look just like it was drawn; correct pen weights etc.

When I need to edit a dwg, I bring it into a separate detail file as you describe, and then place that view on the layout in the main file. Again, this keeps the dwgs attributes from being added to your main file.