topic Re: adding box around only partials of mtext in AutoCAD Forum

adding box around only partials of mtext

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 21:26:54 GMT

Good afternoon,

I have a customer trying to get a box around only certain letters/sections of an mtext object as shown here;

They've been manually drawing the box as I understand. And I've since found a few methods to do frames around the whole text object (TCIRCLE and the Text Frame object property toggle). However, those methods draw the border around the whole object, where the customer really just wants it around certain portions, like the 6 picture above.

Any recourse for this sort of thing?

Thanks,

Re: adding box around only partials of mtext

pendean — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 22:03:21 GMT

Not an option in AutoCAD/LT: its all or nothing.

Perhaps you can OLElink to an Excel Spreadsheet or "word" document that is doing all of that and is only referenced in your CAD file(s), if what you do now needs to go away.

Re: adding box around only partials of mtext

rkmcswain — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 21:38:01 GMT

What kind of criteria do you have regarding this box?

What determines where it goes?

In order to automate it, you'd have to have some rules to go by.

Like around a certain word, or so many units from the right side and bottom, or......?

If the location can be defined with something like that, it can probably be automated with autolisp or some other language.

Re: adding box around only partials of mtext

jeff.lentz — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 21:49:43 GMT

I was thinking background mask, but that likely impacts the whole object. Setting this as a block with attributes would incorporate the box. I don't know of any feature in AutoCAD that would allow a box drawn around just a portion of an mtext object. The box needs to be part of a block. How that's accomplished might vary - a text portion of the block with the box and the rest being an attribute, two attributes, an oversized box that works for any number and a single attribute that combines the number and the text.

Re: adding box around only partials of mtext

ВeekeeCZ — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 08:47:58 GMT

This is a format that you can have quite easily.

Re: adding box around only partials of mtext

Kent1Cooper — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 12:25:32 GMT

These:

are available through the Other... item at the bottom of the list brought down by the @ Symbol icon in the Mtext-editing ribbon. They're at the same nominal height -- the first two [smaller ones] are in the WINGDINGS font, and the last two [larger] in WINGDINGS 2. But they have the rather severe limitations that they go only up to 10, and you have no choice of the font of the character part, and it's quite a bit more work to change the number. There may well be other fonts out there that use a character style more like yours, and/or that have boxed numbers in a wider range.

I was hoping it would be possible to put in an empty square character from one of those symbol fonts, followed by a number:

and kern them together with a reduced "tracking" value:

but that won't go farther down than 75%, nowhere near overlapping them completely.

Re: adding box around only partials of mtext

ChicagoLooper — Sat, 06 Mar 2021 19:11:09 GMT

How about a block? The block would be a rectangle with two attributes.

The 'xxxxxx' and the '-001' parts would be two separate block attributes. The xxxxxx portion would be inside the rectangle and the -001 portion would be outside and to the right of the rectangle.

You can make enhancements as needed, e.g. annotative block, hatch for the rectangle, text style, etc.