Tilted Text

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[Thomas Holm]

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?

[Anonymous]

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?

[Karl Ottenstein]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[Thomas Holm]

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.

[Karl Ottenstein]

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

[Thomas Holm]

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!

[Erika Epstein]

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?