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Font Varies from Different Computers

Patrick M
Advisor

I have a client who has font's showing incorrectly from one computer to another. The font itself does not appear to be missing, but the kerning/spacing/etc. of the text from one computer to another is messed up.
In the attached screen shots from two users on the same file; one shows the font lining up correctly. The other shows the fonts compacted and misaligned with the drafted legend elements. Both are joining to the same t/w file. Both have the fonts loaded on their computers, both are showing with the correct font name, not including brakets [-----] that would indicate the font file is missing or loading incorrectly.

 

Are there any tricks to getting a font to read consistently from Mac to PC?

 

Current suggestions are all more work than it seems like the team should have to put into this:

-redo all multi-line text with single line

-assign a new, more universal font (IE Arial) for all text

 

open to all other thoughts on this one...

Font showing incorrect spacing/alignment

Broken Font.png

 

Font showing correct spacing/alignment (screen grab at lower resolution):

Correct font.png


Correct font.pngBroken Font.png
BIM solutions and trouble shooting (self proclaimed) expert. Using Archicad 26 5002 US on Mac OS 11.5.2
7 REPLIES 7
Barry Kelly
Moderator

Assuming they are both using 26?

If so, do they both have the same (latest update)?

There was a problem in the early releases that got fixed in the latest, that affects font/text positioning.

 

Barry.

One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
i7-10700 @ 2.9Ghz, 32GB ram, GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Erwin Edel
Rockstar

The problem lies with how MAC and Windows interpret font size/spacing. This will happen with any font, as far as I know and isn't exclusive to ArchiCAD. You will have the same issues with something like Excel rows fitting the page and whatnot.

 

We used to have a few macbook pro machines that we mostly just used for client presentation, but if you actually worked on a project there, we would also have issues with font spacing and we use 'standard' Arial.

Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Erwin Edel
Rockstar

From what I recall it has to do with mac using 72 ppi and windows using 96 ppi when translating font sizes.

Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Aaron Bourgoin
Virtuoso

another thought is that while they share the same font names, the Windows and Mac versions of these fonts do not share the same header. We experienced this with Futura and had to hack the header of the Windows version to achieve parity and predictable results.

Think Like a Spec Writer
AC4.55 through 27 / USA AC27-6000 USA
Rhino 8 Mac
MacOS 14.6.1

Hi @Aaron Bourgoin ,

Can you give a bit more context what you did and how reliable it is? I normally try to use the font conversion table, bit honestly, never really got it to work. This workflow is described here:

 

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Project-data-BIM/Replacing-missing-fonts-between-Macintosh-and-W...

 

Are you doing something differently? I work with a lot of offices with mixed hardware, and I have multiple systems as well - I would really appreciate your thoughts as this is a daily struggle for me.

odv.hu | actively using: AC25-27 INT | Rhino6-8 | macOS @ apple silicon / win10 x64
Aaron Bourgoin
Virtuoso

I'll get something more specific today from the workmate who figured out the hack.

Think Like a Spec Writer
AC4.55 through 27 / USA AC27-6000 USA
Rhino 8 Mac
MacOS 14.6.1

both using the same build/version of AC (on a t/w file, so there's not much of a choice on that)

BIM solutions and trouble shooting (self proclaimed) expert. Using Archicad 26 5002 US on Mac OS 11.5.2