Downloaded art with fonts dostorting

[eric812]

I'm currently using Inkscape and Auto Cad combined to get good DXF'S.
My problem is that I keep getting distorted with extra lines and such in the fonts by the time its in DXF format.
Anyone else out there that has had this problem that could send me some pointers.

Thanks!

[hemichargersrt8]

Ok, there is no easy answer to your question. Creating cad files that a cnc machine can read, understand and execute can get complicated. In the simplest form, a computer tells the tool to go a known distance, start at A and go to B. This is relatively straight forward for lines and arcs. Where is gets really complicated are fonts. Fonts are basically images created by artists and are readily scale able and printable. If you download a font editor (used to create custom fonts) and looked at the various fonts in detail you would see they a very sloppy. Lines overlapping, splines etc. You don't see this when you print the document but you do see it when imported to cad software. Your only choice is to recognize that there are good and bad fonts for cnc work. Be prepared to spend many hours editing a chosen font, use cnc friendly fonts or create your text from scratch in your cad software. There are many people on plasma spider that can create beautiful images suitable for cnc plasma cutting but struggle with text. You are not alone!

[eric812]

Thanks Hemichargersrt8 for the good honest bad news. LOL ! Its quit the battle right now because of almost all my current work involves fronts.
I appreciate your response and insight on this.

[tcaudle]

DXF format does not support a Font. it just comes over as vectors (outlines) like everything else. Inksacpe understands Fonts if its in a format that embeds them as fonts. (like EPS AI or CDR) The translation from a vector file with fonts to DXF can be / Fonts are pure vector shapes with embeded information about font type and family , kerning (letter to letter spacing), outline, color and size in normal units. What you see on the screen are the bitmap images of the letters. If you can get the original files into inkscape and the letters look fine (no overlaps) then you might try using the SVG format in Inkscape if your CAM program will import that format. DXF out of a lot of programs is segmented into lines instead of arcs. Once its in DXF there are no fonts anymore. Worse the arcs and curves in the fonts can be hundreds of tiny line segments. It all depends on what you are using for CAM

Fonts were originally a creation by Adobe . and you had to buy fonts to use in any application that used Fonts. The early fonts were copyrighted and there were actual companies that designed and sold fonts. Then Windows came out with Truetype fonts and they were basically free so the market for individual fonts went away. You can get a font design tool and build your own if you are into really tedious work.

[tnbndr]

If you are using Autocad and load the express tools add on you can use a command in there that explodes fonts, there are other text tools also. However you will find that after exploding a font it will require a bit of clean up and modifying. Nothing is easy. Some fonts better than others.
I have had some better luck using a program called Stencil Fonts that takes fonts and allows you to save them in dxf format. However some fonts still need cleanup and fixing. Especially cursive ones as they don't really connect.
Fonts are a lot of work in our plasma world so if you are doing a lot of them I would experiment and find the best way for you.

[bhamer62]

I have about 5 different cad softwares including AutoCad, hands down the easiest to do font work in is DraftSight...Ironically it's free....lol AutoCad is a cumbersome pain in the ass to do a lot of things with, especially for the money they want for it. With that being said, you still need to do a bit of clean up and smoothing out no matter which software you choose to use. The ability to do this efficiently and make your work look professional is what separates the men from the boyz... There are some really cool tricks you can learn to do with the PE EDIT tools to smooth about anything out and not end up with thousands of nodes to deal with.....