Text Mask Erases Text

[cowles]

I've tried searching and can't find an answer to my problem. First off, I know background mask creates fewer problems, but if I can't get it to plot properly with lines merged enabled in my plotter settings, that's a deal breaker... In my mind neither command is perfect, but textmask better accomplishes what I want... if only the command wasn't so glitchy. On to the problem...

If I use the textmask command, the mtext is erased from the drawing. It is not draw ordered behind the wipeout that the command creates, it's just not there. I have tried purging, auditing and recovering the drawing, and nothing works. Does anyone have any other ideas on how I can fix this?

Thanks!

[bcollins]

I've got the same problem from time to time.  I can't tell you what causes it, because it will do it on some text in a particular drawing but not others in the same drawing.  I know it doesn't fix the problem, but the work around that I usually use is to explode the text to make it dtext as opposed to mtext, then mask the individual lines of text, then use txt2mtxt to change it back to mtext.

Another work around is to simply use the wipeout command and draw a polyline around the text you want to mask.  Of course, you'll have to use the draworder command to bring your text on top of your wipeout if you do that, but it will work all the same.

Like I said, this will not fix your problem, but it will allow you to get the results you want at the end.