Font alteration

[TCEBob]

I'm adding some characters to the simplex font (under a changed name, of course). Such as CL, BL, whatever. These can be addressed by their unicode numbers but is there a way of assigning them to a keystroke -- from within the font?

rs

 

[Tom Smith]

Not unless the unicode number happens to be that of a character on your keyboard. ALT+0097 is the character "a" for instance. A common way of addressing this is to assign your custom characters to little-used keys like "`" or "~".

 

[TCEBob]

Not unless the unicode number happens to be that of a character on your keyboard. ALT+0097 is the character "a" for instance. A common way of addressing this is to assign your custom characters to little-used keys like "`" or "~".

Ah, so. Thank you.
Do the F keys have addressable numbers?

rs

 

[Tom Smith]

No, because they don't represent unicode characters, they're special computer keys. But I think you could use the accelerators section of your menu to map characters to F keys.

 

[TCEBob]

No, because they don't represent unicode characters, they're special computer keys. But I think you could use the accelerators section of your menu to map characters to F keys.

Not bad, though. Only problem would be giving the drawing to someone else to work on (surveyor, etc.). Too bad you cant embed the font in the dwg database.

thanks again,

rs

 

[Tom Smith]

Yes, that's always a problem with nonstandard fonts. We use an "architectural" hand style font which has, for example, the semicolon for a plus-or-minus symbol and the tilde for a diameter symbol. There are a fair number of keyboard characters that are never needed in architectural notes.

You pretty much always need to give any custom fonts to others along with your drawings. Not only because of special characters, but also to preserve the general look and formatting. No two fonts have the same letter size, line spacing, etc., so replacing one with another will usually lead to some pretty messy text formatting.

It's simplest to just make a list of the custom fonts you use, and always give all of them to anyone receiving your files. Tell them to pace them in the same folder with the drawing, and they'll always work.

 

[David Claflin]

It's easiest to never use custom fonts, then you never make a mistake and forget to send the custom fonts along.
David

 

[Tom Smith]

Fine slogan, but the use of custom fonts has never been my choice to make. Every office I've been in has used them as a matter of policy, and it's not something I'm willing to resign in protest over, so I deal with it. I've generally managed to minimize and standardize the list of custom fonts in use, and that has been enough of a battle for me. It's just not important enough to fight over anyway, IMHO. I have never had any difficulty remembering to send along all files necessary to display a drawing correctly, including xrefs and text fonts -- I simply can't imagine that being a problem.