Text Mask / Wipeout

[Anonymous]

How do I correct the text mask from hiding the text i selected when creating the text mask??

[Hammer.john.j]

this is the correct answer...

if you explode civil 3d contour labels for example down to the mtext level, they end up at the elevation of the line and then the wipeout doesn't work.  to solve this, select similar and flatten them, then apply the wipeout.

background masks do not work with certain printer drivers so they're useless to a lot of people and super annoying.  wipeouts ALWAYS work.  double bonus stupidity.... if you put a wipeout into a civil 3d label style, cad won't recognize the raster image and pretends it doesn't exist, so you have to explode the civil 3d labels with wipeouts in them in order for the wipeout to work, we've reported the issue so many times i've given up reporting it.

[RobDraw · Accepted solution]

Totally disagree with wipeouts always working in AutoCAD. Maybe C3D is different but that also is a different forum.

[Craigen_J]

You cannot say it is the correct answer based solely on Civil 3D version.

With you being mentor status, you should consider that people reading this could be working in other versions.
You response should have been an Option for those who use C3D, and not start the message with

"this is the correct answer..." because that is not the correct answer for those using different versions.

[deisenbeisz]

Mr. Hammer,

I must disagree with the claim that background masks never work in label styles in Civil 3D.  I use them all the time.  I think they work better than the suggestion of exploding and flattening all of the contours in a drawing file.  That seems very destructive just to allow background mask to work.  But that is for another discussion board...

As for text entities in vanilla AutoCAD, it is EXTREMELY frustrating to try and figure out how to get dtext to mask without wiping out the entire line of text.  Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't.  Converting dtext to Mtext is not really a solution because there are situations where dtext makes more sense and is easier to use.  For example, if you rely upon older LISP functions to do some task involving text.  Another pain in the butt thing about masking dtext is that it masks the entire text box instead of each line.  Invariably, this leads to much more of the drawing being wiped out than is necessary to assist the readability of a simple label or callout.  (Civil 3d has a really nifty solution to all of this, but it isn't documented and it isn't perfect.)  So, if anybody has a suggestion that will actually solve the OP's problem besides "change all of your dtext to mtext" or "buy better CAD software", I would sure love to see it.  Despite the fact that this thread is marked "solved", all of the suggestions thus far have missed the mark.

The snarky remarks about the superiority of dtext (by others in this thread) completely miss the point and are probably offered by people who have only a few years' experience working with AutoCAD.  Just because Mtext has been around since v.14 (not 2014) or so, it is not a cure-all.  Besides that, it shouldn't be too much to ask that a program's features work as intended in as many situations as will likely be encountered in the real world (especially for a package like AutoCAD).  I totally agree with you that Autodesk is not really interested in fixing buggy code.  They seem to put all of their efforts into new features for video animators and releasing another buggy version year after year as a marketing ploy to justify the licensing cost of their software.

I guess that explains why alternatives like BricsCAD are growing (not a fan, but I'm starting to seriously consider it for my company) and AutoCAD has to try to convince us all that we should continue paying way too much for software that doesn't work right.

[RobDraw]

Making assumptions about people's skills is bad form and could put anything you might have to offer subject to scrutiny, especially when the people are well respected in this community. Their advice is quite valid and commonly used.

Good luck...