true type vs. autocad fonts

[Anonymous]

What's everybodys preferences. Does TTF slow the system down?

Thanks,
Todd

[Anonymous]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:04:48 +0000, Todd W wrote:

>What's everybodys preferences. Does TTF slow the system down?

Not nearly as much as they used to.

In short:

TTF Pros:

1. They always plot perfectly, at every scale. You don't have to deal with layer
color or lineweight. This right here is worth the price fo admission.

2. Most of the ones you normally use are installed in AutoCAD already, so you
don't need to deal with installing them or referring to a Fonts folder in the
Support path.

3. When using standard Windows fonts (Arial), any recipients will have them on
their machines, which means you do not need to send them via eTransmit.

4. Unicode is fully supported in TTF fonts.

5. TTF fonts do not have special characters (stacked fractions) which means you
cannot do certain things the way you used to. The good thing is that neither can
anyone else, which increases compatibility across team members.

TTF Cons:

1. They may work slightly slower than vector-based SHX fonts. However, with
modern PCs this has not been an issue for use in many years. Older versions
specifically had issues with TTF fonts in Xrefs, but I have not seen this issue
lately.

2. Any custom fonts you may use need to be specifically installed per machine,
not simply dumped in a Fonts folder on a server. This is easy enough to do,
however.

3. Custom fonts would need to be sent via eTransmit; as with any custom font,
this may have copyright issues to deal with. TTF font files tend to be very
heavy as well, increasing transmission package file size.

4. Custom fonts will not be displayed in the MText editor properly.

5. If you have "Font smoothing" enabled in Windows, text in the MText editor
looks like crap. This is IMO an Autodesk issue.

Matt
mstachoni@comcast.net
mstachoni@bhhtait.com

[dgorsman]

I have used stacked fractions with true-type Arial (or Times New Roman? anyways...), but it was a bit round-bout. Insert as symbol in MS Word document, then copy/paste through the clipboard into the AutoCAD text editor. It even stayed as a stacked fraction in the display. I've also used the technique to access all sorts of special characters/symbols for fonts to improve appearance.

[Anonymous]

This may be a fluke, but in our office, Arial ttf causes random and
mysterious crashes. All of a sudden, while using the wheel on the mouse for
panning or zooming, the image on the screen will just "explode" into these
huge pixelated parts and pieces. Looks like a 1984 DOS Space Invaders game
on a 640x480 CGA monitor. (I'm dating myself)

Redefine all text style using that font with anything else (ttf or shx), and
the issue never occurs. Weird, huh. Just out of morbid curiosity, has
anyone else ever seen such a thing?

-Brian Harder

"Todd W" wrote in message
news:5548317@discussion.autodesk.com...
What's everybodys preferences. Does TTF slow the system down?

Thanks,
Todd

[Anonymous]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:23:13 +0000, dgorsman <> wrote:

>I have used stacked fractions with true-type Arial (or Times New Roman? anyways...), but it was a bit round-bout. Insert as symbol in MS Word document, then copy/paste through the clipboard into the AutoCAD text editor. It even stayed as a stacked fraction in the display. I've also used the technique to access all sorts of special characters/symbols for fonts to improve appearance.

Why not use just stacked Mtext?

Matt
mstachoni@comcast.net
mstachoni@bhhtait.com

[Anonymous]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:42:22 +0000, Brian Harder
wrote:

>This may be a fluke, but in our office, Arial ttf causes random and
>mysterious crashes. All of a sudden, while using the wheel on the mouse for
>panning or zooming, the image on the screen will just "explode" into these
>huge pixelated parts and pieces. Looks like a 1984 DOS Space Invaders game
>on a 640x480 CGA monitor. (I'm dating myself)

>Redefine all text style using that font with anything else (ttf or shx), and
>the issue never occurs. Weird, huh. Just out of morbid curiosity, has
>anyone else ever seen such a thing?

I've seen this in ADT 2005, and it was related to the WHIPTHREAD system
variable. Setting it to 0 (no multithreading) fixed it.

Matt
mstachoni@comcast.net
mstachoni@bhhtait.com

[Anonymous]

Wow! I never would have thought of that. I'll give that a try.
Thanks.

-Brian

"Matt Stachoni" wrote in message
news:5548540@discussion.autodesk.com...
On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:42:22 +0000, Brian Harder

wrote:

>This may be a fluke, but in our office, Arial ttf causes random and
>mysterious crashes. All of a sudden, while using the wheel on the mouse
>for
>panning or zooming, the image on the screen will just "explode" into these
>huge pixelated parts and pieces. Looks like a 1984 DOS Space Invaders game
>on a 640x480 CGA monitor. (I'm dating myself)

>Redefine all text style using that font with anything else (ttf or shx),
>and
>the issue never occurs. Weird, huh. Just out of morbid curiosity, has
>anyone else ever seen such a thing?

I've seen this in ADT 2005, and it was related to the WHIPTHREAD system
variable. Setting it to 0 (no multithreading) fixed it.

Matt
mstachoni@comcast.net
mstachoni@bhhtait.com

[eviele]

We've noticed three issues other than speed with TTF fonts.

1. Some TTF fonts when used with dimensions cause freakish bold stacked fractions as alluded to above.
2. Sometimes TTF fonts don't show when we plot to PDF. This is random, meaning TTF text immediately adjacent may plot to PDF fine while some other text just drops out of the PDF.
3. Sometimes TTF fonts don't plot to the plotter even though they're within the bounds of the viewport. The answer was to stretch the viewport even further than the edge of the sheet and the TTF font plotted fine.

I know these sound weird, but not using TTF font keeps these issues from happening to us.

[dgorsman]

Block attributes
Dimension objects
Inconsistent line spacing between MTEXT objects, depending on text contents
Stacking objects inside MTEXT is, for me anyways, more trouble than its worth

[C O Jones]

I see this from time to time and only in certain files and even then it might only do it twice and never again. I had started wondering if it was TTF but hadn't taken the time to explore. If I audit, save and reopen after it happens I may never see it again. So I am not completely convinced it is TTF doing this. Maybe only certain TTF that are only used in certain drawings. I keep Whiparc set to 0 so I don't think that is it either. I am using ABS2007.

[C O Jones]

If you use a drawing for a word document you might see a slow down, but if you have a "normal" amount of text, notations, keyed notes, etc. I don't think you will see the slow down.

[treedude2525]

At least some TTF fonts do sllow printing down a bit, espeically @ larger sizes vs. .shx fonts that print as outlines or at lineweight. They simply use a lot more ink. This is not "apples to apples" comparison, but it is what I've experienced.

Also, I had a dwg the other day (actually, an org. chart that brought into AutoCAD becuase M$ Visio is such a dog, IME) w/ a fair amount of TTF text. The DWG to PDF.pc3 "plotter" plotted the TTF fonts to PDF as mud, basically. I had ot switch to the Adobe PDF driver, w/ "True Type as Text" in the Plotter Config. THEN the fonts looked like they're supposed to.

Peace,
- Sequoia

[Anonymous]

In my experience with the problem, nothing worked until I had a particularly
troublesome file where it happened nearly everytime I did a wheel pan. It
was so consistent that it made a good test file. The only thing that worked
was getting rid of arial.ttf in the file plus all xrefs attached to it. But
if I reintroduced arial.ttf, it would immediately start crashing again. To
me, that was a pretty good confirmation. I don't understand it, but until I
get the same reproducible results with whipthread (btw, Matt said
whipthread, not whiparc) my monie's on the font solution. I'm planning on
testing the whipthread solution once my current deadline passes.

Cheers,

-Brian Harder


wrote in message news:5548938@discussion.autodesk.com...
I see this from time to time and only in certain files and even then it
might only do it twice and never again. I had started wondering if it was
TTF but hadn't taken the time to explore. If I audit, save and reopen after
it happens I may never see it again. So I am not completely convinced it is
TTF doing this. Maybe only certain TTF that are only used in certain
drawings. I keep Whiparc set to 0 so I don't think that is it either. I am
using ABS2007.