Best Font for Construction Drawings?

[naofomigrim]

I'm just wondering what font your firms use for their drawings in the construction industry. We're a small MEP firm and we currently use Simplex for our drawings. I've never really been a fan and am currently working on getting us to switch to something...more. Our spec on drawings are now going to be Arial (at least for now) because of a change in the way we process those. But that's easy enough to change to a different font in Word.

[dbroad]

I use TTF fonts, specifically Arial.  When a PDF is created, it is searchable without the commenting mess.  No one has complained about readability or usability.

[Kent1Cooper]

One advantage of .shx files over .ttf fonts, if you have such a need:  With .ctb color-based plotted lineweights, even within a single Mtext object

whereas with a .ttf font, you have only regular and bold, and not even bold in some fonts.  And you have no control over how bold [or not] those choices come out when plotted.  With plain Text [not Mtext], though you can't break down the degree of boldness within a Text object, you still have all choices of plotted weight for the whole thing, by the color assigned.

Another advantage, if you have a need for it, is the Vertical-alignment option:

which is not available for .ttf fonts [and not necessarily for all .shx fonts, but at least for those that come with AutoCAD].

But to answer your question, our office generally uses Arial, in part because it's pretty much guaranteed that everyone has it, so we don't need to think about the font question when sending drawings to consultants, etc.

[Michiel.Valcke]

I also use Arial .ttf as my 'go to' Font. But it really depends on the CAD standards  used (required) by your clients. And as @Kent1Cooper said if you have to set up your own standard and you're using .ctb driven lineweights it might be recommended to use a .shx font instead.

[dbroad]

@Kent1Cooper loading mtext with special formatting makes it harder for others to use and interpret later and makes the drawing dependent on specialized CTB's.  How often do you really need any more features than are built into TTF (bold, italic, spacing)?  Construction documentation should be WYSIWYG on screen.

[pendean]

Most outside files I've seen over the last 20-ish years seem to fall into two options generally:
- SIMPLEX.SHX (if you like SHX and don't ever which anyone to search your PDFs for keywords).
- ARIAL.TTF (if the limitation above is something you wish to avoid).

We standardized on the latter 20-years ago now in our offices.

HTH

[dany_rochefort]

We were taught in Drafting school to avoid heavy fonts such as Arial as they are prone to smudging over time.  ''A photocopy of photocopy of a scan'' for example will lead to font enchroachment and 40 years down the line you might have problems.   I regulary work with old school plans from the 60's and some fonts are clear as day while others are black blobs. 

That being said, long gone are the days of fax machines and bad photocopies. Everything now being ''paperless'' fonts such as Arial are very popular. If you are looking for classic drafting type font, anything Iso, Isocp, Iscocpeur works really well.   

[dbroad]

@dany_rochefort 

Hi, wasn't that when plans were prepared with pencil and sometimes with Leroy lettering? 🙂  That's the way I taught long ago before ACAD.

[usovduu]

You'll find any fonts you want in TypeType. I use it all the time, I found movie fonts that help me in my work. go and see what a great selection of quality fonts there is.