File Specific Font Override

[Anonymous]

We are currently providing drawings to another companies standard. As such we have downloaded additional fonts from them and installed them (.shx). The problem is our own company title block references one of the newly installed fonts.  This hasn't been an issue because the font was automatically substituted with Arial by our systems until the font was installed. Is there any way to do a file specific font override similar to the effect of adjusting the font mapping file?

(Yes I’m aware just having our title block correctly formatted would solve all this but it predates me and I can’t update 2 decades worth of files)

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the community!

If I understand your situation correctly, you have a number of drawings that have a title block that includes text or attributes with a Text Style that references a particular SHX font.  At some point, someone decided that Arial.ttf should be used instead of that font, and rather than redefine the Text Style in all of the drawings then available, it was decided to remove that SHX file from company systems and use the font mapping feature of AutoCAD to map Arial.ttf to that SHX font.  Since the font was removed, the mapping took place.  Now, the font is back, and the mapping is not taking place.

I do not know of a way to "override" things so that the mapping would take place.  I can think of several things that you could do, however, which may or may not work for you, depending upon other details of your situation.

1.  If the files being produced to another company's standard have a separate title block which is not affected by the font substitution, you could move the added SHX files to a separate folder, and set up a separate AutoCAD Profile for use when working with the other company's standard.  Keep your old profile (which would not have that separate folder in its search path) for use with your own drawings, and in the profile for the other company work, add the folder with the additional SHX files to the AutoCAD search path.  You would have to change profiles when changing from drawings using your company standard to drawings using the other company's standard.  When using the profile for your standard, the SHX font will not be found, and Arial will be substituted.  When using the profile for the other company's standard, the SHX font will be found, and used.

2.  If both sets of files use your title block, and need to have Arial used in both, and/or having two profiles is not workable, if the Text Style used in the title block should always use Arial.ttf (in other words, for the other company's standard, you have not used your old text style for text that should have the SHX font), a customization (AutoLISP should do) could be written that would redefine that Text Style to use Arial.ttf instead of the SHX font.  If the title blocks are inserted into each file (rather than externally referenced), that customization could then be run from an ACADDOC.lsp file, so that it would run every time someone opens a drawing file.  That way, files get "fixed" as they are opened, without any special effort on the end user's part.

3.  If the title blocks are externally referenced, then you might still make use of the customization and ACADDOC.lsp file noted in Item 2 above, but you would have to have someone open up each title block source file, let the customization run and then save the file.

[selijerome]

I have a title block in each of the drawings in every project. I have tried to use BEDIT to modify block. Used Project wide utilities also to change the font style. Changed Arial TTF in Font Mapping file too. Still at some of the places, i still see Roman texts. Any idea what should i do next?

[pendean]

---

@selijerome wrote:

...Still at some of the places, i still see Roman texts. Any idea what should i do next?

---

STYLE command: change the SHX font(s) used there, REGENALL in between changes if you have more than one to see if the offending "text" changes then you'll know at least for this DWG file where it is still being accessed.

ASSUMING... they are not MTEXT overrides: then you need a LISP to remove the formatting. Find out more about each of those items.