Text Halo

[jbear0000]

I often have to use images in my drawings. Aerial photos and USGS maps most often. Black text just does not show up well on a dark image and white text does not show up well on a light image. So I have to create a halo around the text. Currently the only way to do this is to make a copy of the text and adjust the color and lineweight to control how each piece of text prints. There are many limitations to this method.

It would be nice if a halo could be added to the properties for text, mtext, dimensions, leaders and labels. The color, width and transparency percent of the halo could be selected. In addition give viewports a property to toggle the halo on and off. That way if there is a viewport that does not have an image and you just want black text you can turn off the halo for just that viewport.

See the attached image for an example of text with a halo.

[Neilw_05]

FYI, Map 3D has the ability to apply halos to labels, much like ArcGIS, so the capabilities are available. It just needs to be extended to C3D labels and the other entities you mentioned. In the meanwhile you may find ways to make use of Map for some of your needs.

[jbear0000]

I know map can do halo text with GIS labels, but I don't want to have to export the labels from Civil 3D to bring them in using map. That also would really complicate the drawing in a way that may be hard for other people to pick up and work with.

[Anonymous]

Yes, standard text, like dtext, text, fields, and mtext, should support halos, in a similar way to the manner in which Background Masking works.

[Anonymous]

Can you not use Mtext background masking?  You can vary the size and color of the mask in the Mtext command.  Mtext has alot of power.

Looks like you can also add a background mask to texk in general line labels.

Reid

[jbear0000]

Well, I could use mtext background masking, but it looks horrible when placed on top of images. I end up with white rectangles all over the place, it just looks bad. Setting it to a color also looks bad. See the example image I attached to compare how much better halo text looks than masked text.

[EricStiles]

How can you do that in MAP?  I've spent over an hour trying to create Halo text in Map but have failed.  I have a bunch of text that I would like to convert to a SDF file, but can't figure that out either.  I know how to create a text by typing them one by one but what if they are allready text in a drawing, how do you export that to a SDF.  And then make it Halo text.  I type one piece of text to see if it would work and I for the life of me can not figure out how to display it has hallo.

[Neilw_05]

I wish I had time to develop the workflow for you but I am limited right now. I think you will have to export your text to a csv file or some format that you can link to via Map's FDO tool, perhaps even by linking to the DWG itself. Once linked you can apply a style with the Halo to the text elements in the Map Task Pane. Another approach might be to create a theme from a query of the live drawing and apply the Halo in the theme.

Perhaps Murph will be lurking about and will offer a better solution. In the meanwhile give it a go.

BTW: I only know the old school technique to create a data source from text which is to export the text to a CSV file using a Map Report Query and including the insertion point coordinates. You can also export the text to a shape file to get a similar result. I can't tell you how to export text to SDF.

[dnietubicz]

I've seen this topic numerous times and can't figure out why Autodesk doesn't do this. We are forced to copy all the text on top of itself with varying lineweights and colors to achieve this, but this require multiple text edits. Also, draworder forgets what to do have the time and reverses them for no reason. We've also done this using block attributes, but it has many flaws as well.

I would like this option for Mtext, Dtext, Dimensions, Civil3d Notes, Labels, pretty much any and all text.

Doug

[dnietubicz]

I also agree that background mask looks terrible. Especially when it comes to mtext.

Doug

[troma]

I wonder if someone could make a font with an embedded halo in it?