Creating Rounded 3D Text

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to form text in 3D that looks as though it's made from D shaped material.

(Background - making a 3D printed biscuit mould for the wife with the name of the farm embossed in the base, so that the letters project from the surface of the biscuit when moulded)

I can create text - extrude it, and then chamfer or fillet it but it looks awful. Square edged text would not release the dough properly.

.... there must be a way but it eludes me at the moment 😞

[HughesTooling]

Are you trying to use standard fonts then extruding? If you are I don't think you'll have any luck using a NURBS type modeler. If you don't mind drawing the letters individually so the width is equal you should be able to fillet but you will need to make sure no radii in the letters is smaller than fillet rad you use to dome the letters with.

Mark

[SaeedHamza]

I don't really understand what you want to do

could you please share a screenshot or perhaps a screen cast

Regards

Saeed

[HughesTooling]

I guess he's after something like this. See attached file. Easy if you use a stick font and pipe, pretty near impossible with a fancy font.

[Anonymous]

Yes that's the sort of thing 🙂

[SaeedHamza]

in that case it depends on the type of the text

@Anonymous can you show use the type of the text

[Anonymous]

The font is not hugely important - it's just to put the name of our farm on shortbread biscuits that the wife makes for our guests staying in our holiday lets 

From what I'm hearing from you helpful knowledgeable type I need to use a stick font and pipe along it with a previously described profile, is that correct?

[HughesTooling]

There are some stick fonts here.

http://www.mrrace.com/CamBam_Fonts/

One problem if you use them in Fusion is you'll end up with a lot of double curves, one on top of the other. Fusion doesn't really handle stick fonts that well. It's not really a problem with Fusion,  the problem is TTF fonts are supposed to form an outline but some people have cheated and made letters that look like a single line. What you'll have to do is go over each letter and find the overlaps and delete. Do you know about holding the mouse button down while picking until you get a selection menu?

Mark

[etfrench · Accepted solution]

Here's a technique that should work for most fonts (As long as they are wide enough for the chamfer/fillet).  I used Arial Bold in the screencast.

As you can see in the video, the order of selection is important.

p.s. If you want the edges rounded, then use the fillet command after the chamfer command.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for taking the trouble to demonstrate that. I need to find some time (where does it go?) to experiment along those lines.

Again much appreciation for your trouble.

Andrew

[HughesTooling]

@Anonymous If you're happy with the extrude and draft method I have some tips for you.

First always try extruding the text without exploding, some fonts don't work and you'll need to explode but if the text extrudes without exploding you'll save time and it's easier to edit. You'll notice in the screencast I go back and change to bold, I did need to reselect the draft but that was all.

Do the extrude and draft as 2 features, draft works more reliably when you add it to the extrusion. You'll notice the M needed a small radius added to stop the draft extending through the letter.

Last, use a Rule Fillet to add the draft, you only need to select the top face of each letter.

Mark

[LMF5000]

That last rule fillet function was good to watch. I've been using F360 for over a year and was tediously going around the outlines of extruded text to add the fillet manually. Never knew the rule fillet was the function I needed to do it all in one step! Thanks!