Curve text

[andy_nook]

What is everyone doing (besides wipeout) to put background masks on aec curve text? Is there an Express or LDT command I am not aware of? Thanks, AJN

[Anonymous]

If you are referring to curve labels, I cheat.

In the Label Dialog Bar, I uncheck the "Align on Object" box for curves.

Then I just grip move and rotate the text to the best "eyeball" location.

Then mask as usual.

--
Doug K
LDT 2005, XP Pro 2002 sp2, P4 2.40GHz, 1 GB RAM, Dual 19" Dell LCD, NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5700LE, Left Handed Kensington Trackball, Happily Married
w/Children



wrote in message news:5103654@discussion.autodesk.com...
What is everyone doing (besides wipeout) to put background masks on aec
curve text? Is there an Express or LDT command I am not aware of? Thanks,
AJN

[Anonymous]

I want to know how the definition of "cheating" is involved with the process
you describe?

Sounds much more like an "enhancement" to me. 🙂

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
C3D/LDT/CD/SVY-2K6
Intel P4-3.00GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce2 Ti 64MB


"doug k" wrote in message
news:5104218@discussion.autodesk.com...
If you are referring to curve labels, I cheat.

In the Label Dialog Bar, I uncheck the "Align on Object" box for curves.

Then I just grip move and rotate the text to the best "eyeball" location.

Then mask as usual.

--
Doug K
LDT 2005, XP Pro 2002 sp2, P4 2.40GHz, 1 GB RAM, Dual 19" Dell LCD, NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5700LE, Left Handed Kensington Trackball, Happily Married
w/Children



wrote in message news:5103654@discussion.autodesk.com...
What is everyone doing (besides wipeout) to put background masks on aec
curve text? Is there an Express or LDT command I am not aware of? Thanks,
AJN

[Anonymous]

Ok.
Time to enhance my teamsheet.
;-)

--
Doug K
LDT 2005, XP Pro 2002 sp2, P4 2.40GHz, 1 GB RAM, Dual 19" Dell LCD, NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5700LE, Left Handed Kensington Trackball, Happily Married
w/Children



"Don Reichle" wrote in message
news:5104275@discussion.autodesk.com...
I want to know how the definition of "cheating" is involved with the process
you describe?

Sounds much more like an "enhancement" to me. 🙂

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
C3D/LDT/CD/SVY-2K6
Intel P4-3.00GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce2 Ti 64MB


"doug k" wrote in message
news:5104218@discussion.autodesk.com...
If you are referring to curve labels, I cheat.

In the Label Dialog Bar, I uncheck the "Align on Object" box for curves.

Then I just grip move and rotate the text to the best "eyeball" location.

Then mask as usual.

--
Doug K
LDT 2005, XP Pro 2002 sp2, P4 2.40GHz, 1 GB RAM, Dual 19" Dell LCD, NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5700LE, Left Handed Kensington Trackball, Happily Married
w/Children



wrote in message news:5103654@discussion.autodesk.com...
What is everyone doing (besides wipeout) to put background masks on aec
curve text? Is there an Express or LDT command I am not aware of? Thanks,
AJN

[andy_nook]

I need it to stay curved text, ie I want it to align on curve, but cannot find a way to mask it?

[Anonymous]

Hey Andy;

If this is the Express Tools Curved Text then AFAIK you have one option -
creating a "bounding" Wipeout.

Just type in WIPEOUT, and then draw the figure you need around your text -
but be aware that you'll need to describe a closed polyline. You'll see what
I mean as you use this useful tool.

HTH

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
C3D/LDT/CD/SVY-2K6
AMD XP 3200+ 2.2GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 128MB



wrote in message news:5114704@discussion.autodesk.com...
I need it to stay curved text, ie I want it to align on curve, but cannot
find a way to mask it?

[andy_nook]

Thanks. As I listed in my original post, I am trying not to use wipeout. I actually don't find it very usefull as it is unpredictable when moving or copying, and never seems to plot or .pdf correctly. If I have a 480 lot subdivision and have to wipeout behind each piece of curve text it is very time consuming.

[Anonymous]

see attached.

so you are saying the style of the "upper" label (which can't be masked)
must be used over the style of the "lower" label (which can) ?

--
Doug K
LDT 2005, XP Pro 2002 sp2, P4 2.40GHz, 1 GB RAM, Dual 19" Dell LCD, NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5700LE, Left Handed Kensington Trackball, Happily Married
w/Children



wrote in message news:5116024@discussion.autodesk.com...
Thanks. As I listed in my original post, I am trying not to use wipeout. I
actually don't find it very usefull as it is unpredictable when moving or
copying, and never seems to plot or .pdf correctly. If I have a 480 lot
subdivision and have to wipeout behind each piece of curve text it is very
time consuming.

[andy_nook]

I guess I am not following you...... I cannot get this to duplicate on my end. I have a curve lable style and weather I put on top or bottom of the line it won't mask... What is your"mask as normal"?

[Anonymous]

You need to turn off "align on object" to get regular mtext with a curve
label.
Use the "direction above, distance below" style. It will give you two
occurrences of mtext. Just grip/drag them into a desired position and then
enable their background mask (thru properties or mtext editor).

--
Doug K
LDT 2005, XP Pro 2002 sp2, P4 2.40GHz, 1 GB RAM, Dual 19" Dell LCD, NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5700LE, Left Handed Kensington Trackball, Happily Married
w/Children



wrote in message news:5116211@discussion.autodesk.com...
I guess I am not following you...... I cannot get this to duplicate on my
end. I have a curve lable style and weather I put on top or bottom of the
line it won't mask... What is your"mask as normal"?

[Anonymous]

A little trick I've used on masking curve text & Mtext is to explode the stuff down to regular text, mask it, copy to the clipboard, paste into a blank file (This disassociates the text & wipeout), re copy just the wipeout frames to the clipboard, go to the original file & undo until you unexplode your object, paste the wipeouts in, bring text objects to front.

A little tedious & you loose the association but it looks good.

[Anonymous]

Neat trick, but too many unnecessary steps maybe.
"UNDO" does not empty the clipboard. You don't need to create the new dwg
file. Just copy your wipeout frames to the clipboard, undo back, then paste
and draworder. The rest is a good idea though.

wrote in message news:5116867@discussion.autodesk.com...
A little trick I've used on masking curve text & Mtext is to explode the
stuff down to regular text, mask it, copy to the clipboard, paste into a
blank file (This disassociates the text & wipeout), re copy just the wipeout
frames to the clipboard, go to the original file & undo until you unexplode
your object, paste the wipeouts in, bring text objects to front.

A little tedious & you loose the association but it looks good.

[Anonymous]

Undo is just to unexplode the text which is the beauty of being able to copy/paste, you can explode & hack away, capture something to the clip board then undo back to the original state & save your copy clip. blank drawing trick is so that you can use text mask and swipe a bunch in one click. then by copy/pasting, the text & wipeouts become disassociated and are viewed as separate objects and you can use a filter to quickly grab just the wipeout frames. I've used it on Mtext where I don't want to wipeout the whole bounding box just the individual lines of text without giving up my mtext.

And yes it is a lot of steps. Not ideal but works well in certain scenarios.

[Anonymous]

If your curved text uses a font that is shx, not ttf, you can copy the text
on top of itself and change the original to a pen color that plots 0% shade
and about 3x the pen weight of the original. You get a neat little "cloud"
mask around the text. Its great with mtext paragraphs, since it only masks
each line of text individually instead of creating one large rectangle. In
fact, you can mask just about any kind of entity this way.

Alas, this technique fails with ttfs, since they ignore line weight.

The ideal solution to mask curved ttf text would be to get a font that
replaces each character with a solid rectangle that is a bit bigger than the
character it replaces. It would probably be pretty easy to write, if you're
into that sort of thing.

When a mask is needed, you copy the text entity on top of itself, then
change the original to the masking font. The masking text would be assigned
a "pen" color with 0% shading.

Just to polish it up, the two entities need to be grouped or blocked and I'd
need something in place to streamline editing text that is already masked
like this (double text edit).

hmmm, y'know I might be willing to pay for something like that.

[Anonymous]

Example of a "cloud" mask attached. I used two identical (except for color)
stacked mtext entities.