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Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Anonymous
Not applicable
Despite finding a wish dating from around 2004 there seems to have been little to no movement to increase our text edit functionality. While I totally get ArchiCAD isn't a word processing program we find the text is incredibly clunky to use when trying to produce a lot of text, notes & lists.

The current frustration is the ability to convert from lower case to caps, as all caps is a council requirement here.

Have I missed something and this is possible, do we have to install an add-on, or do we just keep waiting while copying to word, converting to caps and copying back through!!

https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=1524

TIA Joe
20 REPLIES 20
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
See I already wrote this, but in terms of billable hours I would just forego our 'house style / format' and select all text blocks and swap them to something like PERPETUA TITLING MT (just having a quick look at the CAPS fonts here) and move on.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
PrendosJoe wrote:
From our perspective it's pretty basic text functionality & an additional step that really shouldn't be required, especially in a program as intelligent in other ways such as ArchiCAD. It may not take a lot of additional time, but it still does take time & unfortunately time = money in this capitalist world of ours!
Steve wrote:
PrendosJoe wrote:
Thanks folks, looks like we're going to have to continue working with our current workflow. Very frustrating when you get manufacturers standard details etc and have to re-write every note in CAPS!!
Not a problem is it? I keep Microsoft Word open all the time just for that reason.
Copy and Paste.
2018-05-30_6-12-03.png
https://www.screencast.com/t/DUDHkQDdv
In the case you refer to ( manufactures standard details) that can be as easy as just using an All Caps font. Lots of them out there. And you can use the Translator set up to automatically convert all texts imported to the All Caps font. If the manufactures detail is a .pdf you can display the text with an all caps font with the Adobe Acrobat Pro ( or similar version). I would think you would be able to Publish an entire set of Construction Documents as .dwg, then import them using the Translator to automatically change all text to the All Caps font.
However, it's all sort of a work around. It would be great if ArchiCAD had tools for editing System Fonts.

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Paul King
Mentor
A good possibility for those actively trying to use all caps - though less convenient for those needing to go the other way (which is most often in my case, based on the readability research and space advantages of associated with lowercase ).

Definitely agree - extended ArchiCAD functionality required to deal with this
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-28 | Twinmotion 2024
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
Paul wrote:
A good possibility for those actively trying to use all caps - though less convenient for those needing to go the other way (which is most often in my case, based on the readability research and space advantages of associated with lowercase ).

Definitely agree - extended ArchiCAD functionality required to deal with this
But users are have to meet National CAD Standards with all caps.

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Anonymous
Not applicable
Sounds like it's a fairly needed functionality, fingers crossed it arrives at some point!

Cheers all
Paul King
Mentor
Steve wrote:
But users are have to meet National CAD Standards with all caps.
Whose national standards? Not all are the same, and some offices prohibit use of all caps, because the research shows all caps is just harder to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps.
Agree the option to toggle caps is important - between 'all caps', 'all lowercase' and 'sentence case'
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-28 | Twinmotion 2024
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
All caps did not become an industry-standard for Architectural Fonts because of an ease of reading - but because of writing techniques and printing tools which are now for the most part obsolete.
The old Ames Lettering devise, Leroy Lettering tools... There was a time when we needed to get the computer fonts to match the fonts of the sheets in older sets of plans where sheets were being added, copied, pasted together...
Also, ease of reading does not always equate to careful reading. Not only is Architectural Lettering different than casual reading fonts, so are the mechanics of sentence structure for notes. There is sort of an industry vernacular that is used specifically for the purpose of accuracy which is not necessary for easy reading/writing.
So when you see all caps used in a set of Architectural Plans it's not necessarily an arbitrary choice. It is one of several features working together which are intended to constitute a Professional set of Drawings - the subtlety of which is perhaps entirely lost on today's youth I still use an Architectural Hand font with ArchiCAD because is matches my own almost perfectly. It's called SP Hand and was distributed with SoftPlan back in mid 80's. However, for the General Notes sheets I use an easy to read font and of course Sentance Case.
For what ever it is worth, it is interesting to note the SoftPlan 2020 has an All Caps function. It's helpful I suppose to clean up notes and parts of notes that have been copied and pasted in one format or another so they can all be the same. I think using Microsoft Word is convenient enough for me. I always have it open anyway.

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Eduardo Rolon
Moderator
FWIW the triangle example is wrong he will smear ink all over the drawings.
The correct placement is to mirror the triangle since then he will be pushing it over white paper and not dragging it over recent ink. Also he is holding the technical pen wrong it should be as close to perpendicular as possible.
If someone lettered like this at the office he would have been fired.
Eduardo Rolón AIA NCARB
AC27 US/INT -> AC08

Macbook Pro M1 Max 64GB ram, OS X 10.XX latest
another Moderator

That is for sure. But I don't think the example is a technical pen anyway.

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Paul King
Mentor
M wrote:
There is a website you can use to convert your text to all caps: https://convertcase.net

The spell check in ARCHICAD will check words in all caps, if you have Microsoft Office set to do so. Open Word, click Options on the very bottom left, and then click on Proofing. Make sure that “Ignore words in UPPERCASE” is unchecked. If this box is checked, the spell check will not proof any words in all caps.
Yes workarounds like that exist, but requires manually cutting and pasting each note, out of potentially thousands of notes
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-28 | Twinmotion 2024
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop