Axis,
this is a problem that I have recently tackled.
when i got to my current seat, the company's workflow was to c/p standard letters/numbers from a .ipt file that was just a couple of sketches. slow & painful.
I used the 3dtext add in on Charles' site for a bit. its ok, allows for pretty precise placement of text, and it creates the text as sketch geometry. you will have to remove interior loops.
then I started using sketch text to insert the text I want. it's a little harder to accurately place the text than with 3dtext, but it's faster. In order to get this to work, we had to create a custom font with no curves and no interior loops and use that for the sketch text.
to make the font, we used a font creator software found with google and edited sth like tahoma to get to where we wanted.
some observations:
1) using "save copy as" from flat pattern in sheet metal mode gave us larger file sizes than if we used an addin called "export geometry for flat pattern" at the bottom of kent's site:
http://www.kwikmcad.com/icode/addins.asp this addin allows you to save a flat face to dwg or dxf by right clicking.
1a) the planar geometry addin works for us because what we're getting lasered never has bendlines. if you needed a flattened pattern, well: **edit** in fact it looks like bendlines interfere with the add-in.
2) you cannot change the default sketch text font. We named our custom font Tahoma2 so it would at least be a click away.
3) in terms of file size: custom font < 3dtext < sketch text. annnd export planar add-in < save-flat ~= save-as-dxf from idw.
btw, im on IV10 sp3, apparently you can RMB to export a face in 11.
HTH
-barrett
Message was edited by: rblawson (added part 1a)
Message was edited by: rblawson (fixed part 1a after testing)