Text printing out super light
First of all, what FONT is your text style using?
Zooming in on your screen capture, the text is extremely thin so you might want to use a TTF font which has a thicker line width or set the layers used for
text to a different Lineweight.
What colour is the text showing as on screen?
This may be coming out as a grey scale if trying to print colour on a mono printer
Is the CTB set to print this as black or a thin Lineweight?
Edit the CTB so that the colour either prints as black or comes out thicker
If you are using a SHX font, are you using the font substitution?
Try turning this on or off depending on what you normally use...
Regards Brad
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Brad Coleman, Electrical Draftsman
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There are a couple of things that could be going on here.
First, as Brad mentioned, be aware of the fundamental difference between .shx and .ttf fonts: shx fonts will absorb whatever lineweight you assign, whereas ttf fonts never get thicker no matter what lineweight they have. They can only be bolded, and that can only be done through the text editor. This unpacks to one simple thing: check the lineweight assigned to the text, or to the layer it's on.
The other thing, also as Brad mentioned, has to do with how you plot. Are you using ctb? Then look at the color-to-penwieght mapping in the ctb file. Actually, first thing is to make sure your drawing is using the correct ctb file to begin with. Alternatively, if you're using stb, you can try just giving the text or its layer a different plot style that has a thicker line.
If you're plotting to pdf, font substitution matters. SHX fonts are an AutoCAD thing. TTF fonts are an everybody-else-in-the-world thing.
Having super-thin lineweights on-screen when using shx fonts is totally normal, IF that lineweight is set to be very small OR if you aren't displaying lineweights in your drawing. Their behavior, as far as how they are displayed on the monitor, is exactly the same as a line. It will be the same thickness/weight no matter what zoom scale you are currently in, unless you make it have a weight.
Has something changed with your setup? You said old drawings used to appear normal. What was 'normal', and was it on a different version of the software?
Jim
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
First, as Brad mentioned, be aware of the fundamental difference between .shx and .ttf fonts: shx fonts will absorb whatever lineweight you assign, whereas ttf fonts never get thicker no matter what lineweight they have. They can only be bolded, and that can only be done through the text editor. This unpacks to one simple thing: check the lineweight assigned to the text, or to the layer it's on.
The other thing, also as Brad mentioned, has to do with how you plot. Are you using ctb? Then look at the color-to-penwieght mapping in the ctb file. Actually, first thing is to make sure your drawing is using the correct ctb file to begin with. Alternatively, if you're using stb, you can try just giving the text or its layer a different plot style that has a thicker line.
If you're plotting to pdf, font substitution matters. SHX fonts are an AutoCAD thing. TTF fonts are an everybody-else-in-the-world thing.
Having super-thin lineweights on-screen when using shx fonts is totally normal, IF that lineweight is set to be very small OR if you aren't displaying lineweights in your drawing. Their behavior, as far as how they are displayed on the monitor, is exactly the same as a line. It will be the same thickness/weight no matter what zoom scale you are currently in, unless you make it have a weight.
Has something changed with your setup? You said old drawings used to appear normal. What was 'normal', and was it on a different version of the software?
Jim
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
I opened up the drawing again and noticed this:
Is this the problem? On my colleagues' machine, he doesn't have the above substituting message
I'm set to print monochrome.
My ACADE.FMP file looks like this:
I don't know how to turn off font substitution if that is the problem.
Thoughts?
1. If you're getting the message but a colleague isn't, this most likely means that the listed fonts aren't present on your computer. To fix this, run a search on your colleague's hard drive to find where the fonts are stored (It's a common Windows folder). Just copy the whole folder, and take it to your computer. Find where your computer keeps fonts (should be similar or same location) and swap the new fonts folder in. Of course, back up your fonts folder first, just in case there's something unique in there. Fonts can be added individually if you prefer.)
2. The screen shot of your ctb shows that you're using the default monochrome.ctb. Notice that it says 'lineweight: Use Object Lineweight' ...this means that whatever lineweight is assigned to the object itself is the one that gets plotted. Have you always used this ctb file? Most companies make their own to use. Anyway, if this is how you have to do it, then start looking at layer and object properties to give the text a thicker lineweight. I wouldn't edit the ctb file to get what you want, unless you plan to share it with other users. Remember, they have a file with that exact same name on their computer, too. If you change yours, theirs will still be the same. (Unless you have your ctb files on the network.)
3. Does your colleague have problems when plotting? If not, adding the proper fonts to your computer may do the trick.
4. FYI: Font substitution, as a thing, should only exist when plotting to pdf. This should mainly be used if you are using an AutoCAD-specific font (shx fonts). Reason being, as I mentioned before, everyone else uses ttf fonts and a lot of software can't really work with the old shx fonts. So, font substitution is the way around that: essentially, you're mapping an shx font to a particular ttf font, so that the pdf writer can properly generate the text. Unless you're only seeing this issue when plotting to pdf, it's very unlikely that font substitution is having an effect here. (To clarify, 'font substitution' as it relates to making PDFs, and the substitution message you get when opening a drawing, are two completely different and unrelated things. They just use the same words.)
Jim
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
If I double click on the text, I get the text editor tab. On the upper left corner under STYLE I can expand my styles. If I remember correctly, there should be text samples of above the text selection.
You can see ROMAND has a sample. But fonts I normally use like STANDARD and WD dont' have samples. Thoughts?
Accepted solution
Configure AcadE to use ACAD.FMP, not ACADE.FMP. Then, it shouldn't substitute the fonts when you open the drawing.
[[1. If you're getting the message but a colleague isn't, this most likely means that the listed fonts aren't present on your computer. To fix this, run a search on your colleague's hard drive to find where the fonts are stored (It's a common Windows folder). Just copy the whole folder, and take it to your computer. Find where your computer keeps fonts (should be similar or same location) and swap the new fonts folder in. Of course, back up your fonts folder first, just in case there's something unique in there. Fonts can be added individually if you prefer.)]]
I did that and it didn't fix the problem. Furthermore, it looks like some fonts are being found:
On my colleague's machine, it was able to find all the fonts including standard and WD. In my colleague's font folder, there isn't a standard or WD font SHX file inside, yet they have access to those fonts. All our SHX fonts are here: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2017\Fonts
Thoughts?
Hi, I tried to publish to PDF by using PLOT and it works for the Fonts, but not Batch Plot. Please Help. Thank you.
