User Parameter driven text height - Inventor 2012

[G.Hunter]

We are having issues with text height and variations depending on how the text is added.

I am currently adding etching to sheet metal parts by using the user parameters (which are driven by 3rd party source, excel file) and using a cut extrusion -1mm.

We have developed a marco which detects the shape of each letter and adds etching to our sheet metal program manually. We do this to get rid of the double lines when you cut text into a part. Our process is design in Inventor, unfold then convert to DXF 2004, where we import to our SM programming package (Radan).

I have noticed that when using 10mm simplex if the text is driven by parameters and 10 point text is selected the charecter height is 9.9928mm, however if the text is added manually it measures 10mm exactly. Why is this happening? It is probably of no concern to most, but we would need to add extra charecters to our macro to account for the descrepency, and in turn would take the macro longer to run.

When the text is added by user parameters, you can briefly see the 10mm text height flash to 9.99mm when finishing the edit sketch. Changing this to 10mm again has no effect.

Does anyone have any idea on what is causing this, or have any alternative ways of adding 10mm simplex single line etching to a dxf from an Inventor 2012 SM part?

[jletcher]

Is the error in dim the same every time or is the text height at radom?

[G.Hunter]

It's the same every time, same for all users in the office too.

[G.Hunter]

Does anyone know if Inventor 2013 has this problem? Or any other way of adding etching to parts, that wont add double lines around etch charecters when parts are unfolded and converted to DXF's?

[jletcher]

what text are you using I had great luck no dbl lines I use Arial text.

[G.Hunter]

We are using simplex, 10 point. When we etch (using parameter driven text, extruded cut 1mm) we get the outline of the text. When our etch and dab cnc punch tools get it in this format, it takes too long as they etch around the outside of the charecters, instead of etching a single line.

See attached image. We would like our flat development to have a single line. Since we have a macro set up to convert this double line to single line, we would also like to know what is causing the variation in text height between manual and parameter driven text.