AutoCAD 2018 Jumbled Font

[Morswood]

Hello, everyone! I hope your respective days are going well and you all have great plans for the weekend.

I am having a very strange issue with the new AutoCAD 2018 that is pervasive throughout our entire office. Specific only to this version, the Arial font refuses to display properly in an Mtext. Perhaps others as well, but I’m not checking every single font unless I have to.

I can open up an old project that was never touched by this program and all text will display properly. However, the moment I edit the text in any way, it jumbles together; the letters will still be the correct size, but the spacing between them will enter a negative value so that they overlap severely with each other. When zooming in and out, the text is still affected by what would be the edge of the screen, undrawing letters that would normally not be viewable. Afterwards, all other Mtext will retain a correct appearance until they’re redrawn in some way, then they will also have this bug. This translates into anything plotted, but I can reload the project in 2017 and everything will be fine, including all edits made to any text.

The strangest thing is that if I edit the appearance of the font itself in (almost) any way, the bug will resolve. If I set it bold, italic, or even just change the spacing of the letters by 1/10000, it appears and plots as normal, but it doesn’t work if I only change the size of the text. This doesn’t seem especially worthwhile, as I’d have to change every single Mtext that happens to have this font throughout every project every time, whereas I could just continue using 2017.

I have searched extensively about this issue and what precious few posts I found had no resolutions. Does anyone have any ideas on how to permanently fix this issue?

[john.vellek]

Hi @Morswood,

I tried this on my AutoCAD 2018 but could not duplicate the issue. Is it possible to attach to a post, one of your files where this appears? I would like to see if there something unique about it. Is this happening in all your files? are they saved in the current 2018 file format or in 2013 format?

If you toggle Hardware Acceleration in GRAPHICSCONFIG does it make any change in the appearance?

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Morswood]

This happens in every single file that I open, so there's no file I can send you. I did try using AUDIT, but it consistently reported zero errors. As for the file format: ours are saved as 2013. Clients' files could be saved as anything, but we typically block them into our own templates.

I went an extra couple of steps and tried exporting a drawing as a 2018 format. The problem was still there. So, I tried opening the standard acad.dwt. The Arial font looked fine when I just made an mtext, although that's all the testing I have time for at the moment. I'll have to compare the differences later. My brain finds it hard to believe that only a single common font is screwed up because of an errant text setting; surely it would affect them all or at least not be resolved by simply changing it to bold or italic.

[john.vellek]

Hi @Morswood,

Thanks for the quick reply. Is the mtext part of a block or is it just placed as mtext? Does the Mtext have an assigned height or is it taking the height from the style? What is the Width Factor in the text style? Or there any overrides being applied to the Mtext?

[pendean]

Post a portion of a DWG where this problem resides so we can see and test for ourselves.

[Morswood]

Alright, by popular demand, here's a file where it does occur. The fonts are being controlled by font styles, so their height changes as well. However, the problem occurs even when changing the font directly and when changing the font in a style.

After more testing, it happens on text as well. However, it now seems to decide whether it wants to be mean to Arial. I'll open the file and Arial is being squashed. I'll switch to paper space and Arial is fine. Then, I'll switch back to model space and Arial is now fine here, even after swapping again between fonts in both spaces. Save, reopen, and Arial is being squashed again. All of this with no settings being changed; just changing fonts. I also can't seem to replicate this at all in acad.dwt either, even by copying in the offending fonts. Is it possible that there's a setting somewhere that is set upon opening each file and can change if it senses something has gone awry?

Another bit of data that I'm sorry I neglected to mention, but please understand that I'm here on downtime between projects: our computers only share support files. I'm the only Win7 computer in the building while everyone else is on Win10. We also all have our own settings (although somewhat similar; we don't get too crazy with it), software, LISPs, etc. Yet, we all have the same problem.

We do pull our support files from shared locations and these support files do include a custom fonts file, but as stated: everything works perfectly on all previous versions of ACAD.

[john.vellek]

HI @Morswood,

I am curious about your text style.  I do see the issue as you describe it but if I change your text style to have a height of 0 and then assign the text a height then the problem goes away.

Your text style defines Arial_1 with a height of 5-7/8 but the text height in the drawing has an override to be be 11-13/16". This doesn't make sense to me and perhaps is part of the issue. Can you give me some more detail on how you intend this to work?

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Morswood]

Hmm... I just tried that, but it didn't work over here. Odd. Neither did doing it the other way around. The exact same problem persists with no improvement. The Arial font is still broken. Good idea, though.

Also, we're not intending for those styles to do anything but work as they were sent. You see, our font styles are R4 and R8. They don't have any problems at all and we use overrides for them hundreds of times every day. I was judiciously using 2018 for a few days doing so until I went to change a border and noticed that not all was right. Going back, everything still seems fine. Virtually all of the other styles are from our clients where they've placed room names, borders, notes, etc. We just copy those over into our own template, set it to our layers, clean it up, and then xref it into our own drawings.

Although I haven't had much time to find anything new today, I was forwarded an email about an update that was released for 2018 that fixes it expiring on June 1st (whoops!), but our "I.T. Department" hasn't gotten around to downloading it yet. Are you running that patch?

[chriscowgill7373]

You definitely want to make sure you have the update, I have not seen this issue on my system, and I'm running it fully patched.

[john.vellek]

HI @Morswood,

I definitely recommend applying the update so your subscription license doesn't come to a halt on June 1.

I am able to duplicate what you are seeing with the font but only in your file. I am unable to duplicate this on any other drawing.  I copied the entire contents of your modelspace and put into a new 2018 format drawing file. I can close/reopen and the font displays properly.

I suggest moving the content to a new file on your system and let me know if the problem persists.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[john.vellek]

Hi @Morswood,

I have just stumbled upon another customer having a similar issue with Arial in AutoCAD 2018. I have brought this issue to the attention of the QA team so we can try to figure out what might be causing the strange spacing issue.

Thanks for your patience. 

[EDIT] The one other customer's file contained a block that caused this behavior in AutoCAD 2018. When the block is removed from their file and the drawing is purged, the Text styles could be reset and then no longer displayed this errant behavior.

[Morswood]

Hello, again! I hope that everyone is having a great Friday.

Just hopping on here to tell everyone that I appreciate the work they're doing to figure out this problem. I have been keeping up with everyone's responses, but I'm kind of swamped with work at the moment. When it rains, it pours over here. I'll have a comprehensive answer for everyone just as soon as I get a chance.

[john.vellek]

HI @Morswood,

I am still looking at your file. I see that if I move the model contents to another empty file, it works as expected. That leaves paperspace objects which consist of your border and some viewports. I found that if I brought the border into my new file that the Arial-based styles again broke. The same thing is true with your viewports.

One thing that bothers me still is the height settings in the styles which are overridden in the mtext objects (overrides). I also don't see a Standard Dimstyle in your file which is also unusual.

I am continuing to work on this to determine what might be happening. The only other instance I have seen like this has Masks that seem to break the styles.  Did  you ever have masks in this file?

[Anonymous]

Exactly the same problem

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

Is it possible to share one of your files with this problem? I am still trying to isolate exactly what might be causing this problem.

[LDShaw · Accepted solution]

Adding my two cents. I just ran across the same problem. I exported a dwg from Revit that has an Arial fonts in the title block. When I open the dwg in autocad 2018 the arial font overlaps or jumbled the same way if I regen. If I open it in 2016 or 2017 it's fine. If I go to the standard style font I am fine.

I ended up creating a new base file with the font styles that were messing up already created. I then pasted the dwg into the base file. This got rid of the problem.

Attached is a simple file with the problem. You probably won't see it until you regen (zoom all won't break it.) the drawing. Then the text should jumble for you.

[Morswood]

I got a message from Mr. Vellek as I was typing this out, but figured that I might as well post what I had.

Okay, I've finally been able to do some more testing. I made a new, clean file with an Arial font style and wrote out some MText. I imported the border in its entirety and I also experienced Arial breaking. The strangest part is that it remained broken after undoing the copy. I tried removing all blocks before importing, but that still didn't work. I tried remaking the Arial font style, but the problem persisted. I had to reopen the clean file just to get things back to normal.

I then imported small pieces of the border at a time. What broke Arial on my end wasn't a block; it turned out to be the "A100" sheet number with the SansSerif_3 plot style. I set it up again and did the same thing with other pieces and the "DATE:" MText with SansSerif plot style broke it, too. Undo did not reset the changes in either case. Trying it once more, I tried undoing the copy before REGENing anything and it still broke. Seeing an obvious pattern, I tried setting up a font style with SansSerif but nothing broke. Looking more closely at these two different offending MTexts, I saw nothing strange and neither did AUDIT. Anything that seemed even somewhat out of the ordinary I tried modifying before importing to see if it made a difference. Only by changing the font style to something other than a SansSerif font did it not break anything.

I noticed in one of your earlier replies that you've seen something like this happen to a masked MText. Yes; there was a masked MText containing potentially sensitive information that was not sent out. It was using the background color with a 1.25 border offset factor, if any of that matters. I imported it as Arial, changed it to the clean SansSerif font, and fiddled with a few other things. Nothing went awry, but I concede that I don't know the exact problem you meant.

Finally, I noticed Ishaw's reply and tried it. It worked perfectly. In fact, the only suggestion that actually gets around the problem. It's a pain, but I suppose I could launder our drawings with a bunch of dummy plot styles just to wash an import clean and then import it into the appropriate template.

Once again, thanks to everyone for the help!

[john.vellek]

Hi @Morswood,

Thanks for the details as I hope the additional information will help the QA team.  I am sorry you didn't see in my post #10 where I suggested moving the drawing into a new one as this worked for me. I will continue to watch the issue and I will try to update this thread with more answers.

Thanks again for your patience and contribution.

[Morswood]

I did see your post and I did try that, but doing that alone still broke Arial. I perhaps should have expounded upon that a bit more in my last post. The difference with Ishaw's approach was that he made a bunch of dummy plot styles matching the imported drawing's plot styles, which like blocks took precedence and somehow cleaned them up. If I give the dummy styles the same heights on top of that, then all's well even for the text with overrides, as annoying as it is to do.

With that said, I do still appreciate all the help you gave and please remember that you did come up with solutions for your computer, but they just didn't work for mine. Trust me: mine's a weird one.

[LDShaw]

"https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Text-d..."

I am still working on my problem. I just found this in Autodesk Data Base.

Looks like Autodesk at least knows of the problem.