Thursday, July 07, 2011

Fonts and fonts

I recently traded emails with David Edwards of TC Fonts regarding Revit's ambivalence to .shx fonts and the issues that arise when we import from dwg files and export to dwg files.


Initially he was interested in my thoughts on something he is considering working on. I think my opinion is too narrow in this case and he agreed to let me open it up a little more, to this blog's readers.

David writes:

I'm working on 2 sets of fonts intended to make importing DWG files that use SHX fonts into Revit work better. This means that the fonts will match more accurately, at least when it comes to their height and line length. I was thinking about making the characters not look identical (except for stroke) width to Romans or Simplex for more like Arial or Helvetica, so that when using Arial in Revit, the old details wouldn't be so "different" in look. Alternatively I could make them very similar to the plot look of the SHX.

Any thoughts on what might be preferable?


He also wrote:

Revit really screwed up on the DWG export. It only allows Truetype fonts to be specified in the DWG whereas most of the AutoCAD world still uses SHX as their standards. I'm also thinking of doing an SHX that matches with the look and width of Arial.

If you've got an opinion on this subject please respond in a comment. If you'd like to have a longer conversation with David about it I can connect the dots! Thanks!

2 comments:

ארז בן-אליעזר said...

Its a big mess this font problem
in hebrew it get worse...
Erez
Israel revit blog
www.revit.co.il

Anonymous said...

I know with Revit 2012 the dwg exporting has improved to the fact that you can map a shx font for a trutype when exporting.