Adding Fonts to Mac installed Fusion 360

[OFGLLC]

I have two Macbooks that run Fusion well but I have been unsuccessful at adding fonts, specifically stencil fonts.  I have a PC that adds fonts fine. On one Macbook, a stencil font is already on it (perhaps from Office for Mac) that works fine in the Fusion installed on it.  I even moved that exact font from the working installation Mac to the other Mac and while available, it just displays as red boxes in the Text Command.  This is what happens when attempting to add downloaded fonts to either Mac.  Attempting to open sketches from the PC or working Mac (with the one stencil font) results in a red box around each character.

[Phil.E]

Hi,

I'd like to help but need to ask some questions:

First, is it just these "stencil" fonts? Can you add any other font to any mac you have and it shows up in Fusion? 

Second, did you install the font correctly?

"I even moved that exact font from the working installation Mac to the other Mac and while available, it just displays as red boxes in the Text Command."

• Can you use the font in any other app on the mac where it's just red boxes in Fusion? 
• Third, did you restart Fusion and/or your mac after installing the fonts?

Known limitations of fonts in modeling operations for Fusion:

Symbolic fonts are not supported. Sometimes this includes text fonts that haven't been labeled correctly by their makers. Fusion sees them as symbolic and does not show them.

• Does the font show up in Fusion drawings, but not the modeling environment? If so, that would indicate the font is symbolic.

Thanks,

Phil

[OFGLLC]

1) I don¹t know what a pencil font is. I am attempting to install stencil
fonts. I have tried quite a few with the same result. True Type, etc.

2) I installed them with the Mac font App. They appear in the font list and
work in other applications. They appear in the font list in Fusion (after
restarting Fusion) but when text is entered in the dialog, a red rectangular
outline appears where the character would be.

3) I am only interested in using them in sketches because I¹m using them for
plasma cut projects.

The odd thing is that the ³Stencil² font works on the Mac where it was part
of an Office for Mac installation but when installed to the other Mac, red
outlines. Interestingly enough, the first Mac has another font called
³stencil std² and it places red boxes instead of text on both Macs. It¹s
like there is some information that isn¹t transferred correctly with the
fonts on the Mac, while they do install on the PC and work fine. Somehow,
however, the font ³stencil² does work on the Office for Mac PC.

[Phil.E]

If you could try to use the faulty fonts in a drawing, and let us know if it works, that would be a strong clue about what is going on here. 

[OFGLLC]

Using a design with some solids in it, I created a Drawing from Design and added a Text Annotation  The Stencil font worked fine for that.

I added a screencast demonstrating the red box in the sketch environment..

[Phil.E]

This is as I expected.

The font is not being allowed in modeling because it belongs to a class of fonts that cause crashes in 3D operations. It shows up in drawings because there is no problem showing these fonts in 2D. There may in fact be nothing wrong with the font, but because of how it's labeled/tagged in your OS Fusion is blocking it.

There may be eventual re-work of how Fusion handles fonts like this, but it's not going to change soon. If you can attach the font here it will help make a case for a general improvement for these fonts.

Thanks,

[OFGLLC]

Repeating:It works on one Mac where I believe it came from Office for Mac.  There are hundreds of stencil fonts available.  I have downloaded free ones and bought them.  None of them work in Fusion on the Macs.  This is a pretty irritating problem since Fusion supports Plasma and more recently exploding the text.  It is very tedious to have to manually deal with each character to prevent drop outs when there are so many stencil fonts available.

I really don't understand how they all work in the PC version of Fusion but not in the Mac version.  The logistics of my office and my shop basically require me to have the Mac in the shop.  The only reason I have one PC in my office is that I started with a CAD system that would not support Mac.  Fusion's dual platform is fantastic!,  although I have had problems with Designs started on the PC and then worked on on the Mac.  Most of these plasma designs are just done in the shop.

[Anonymous]

Is there a solution to this yet or is there a stencil font you can recommend that works with Fusion 360 on the Mac?

[OFGLLC]

No, not really. Here is what I know though. I have four MacBooks, one PC. Three of the MacBooks have Office for Mac installed. The “Stencil” (yep, that’s the name) font that came from Office works on the three with Office installed. The fourth one that I have in my shop is there because the screen is blown up and it is attached to an HDMI TV. Well, 2 of them are HDMI TV but the blown up screen is in my shop so I can’t just swap it with one of the others. So, the Stencil font from Office works on the three with Office installed. On the PC, I downloaded a font called “StarDos Stencil”. It works fine. I assume other truetype fonts would work there as well.

Here is what I tried to no avail on the shop Mac (Fusion was restarted in every case):
Downloaded many fonts and installed with FontBook App.
Copied “Stencil” (export) from other Macbook and installed with FontBook.
Copied “StarDos Stencil” from other PC and installed with FontBook.
Installed Stencil and Stados Stencil and re-installed Fusion 360.

The problem, of course, is that the same font(S) need to be on all the machines that host Fusion. Once the font is “exploded”, the font is irrelevant so I can start a project on any of the other machines and explode the text, but I can not initiate a Stencil font on the shop Macbook Air.

I hope somebody can figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Hi there, 

I am looking for this same functionality and have the same issue as above. Is there a fix for this yet? 

Thanks

[Phil.E]

It's just like @OFGLLC said early in the post:

"It¹s
like there is some information that isn¹t transferred correctly with the
fonts on the Mac, while they do install on the PC and work fine. "

These fonts are blocked by Fusion because Fusion excludes fonts that cause crashes known as symbolic fonts. At least that is the current diagnosis based on the described behavior, i.e. the "red box" fonts appear normally in Fusion drawings. This shows that Fusion can read the fonts just fine for 2D work, and won't read them for 3D work because they appear to be symbolic (or are just not marked in a way that Fusion accepts them for 3D work).

Also the fact that the Office fonts, which are installed with Office not by the user, must carry the necessary tags. This indicates that the font files themselves are somehow stripped by the OS, not by Fusion, of the appropriate tags to allow Fusion to use them.

That being said, if you could attach one of these problem fonts (so I don't have to guess if I found the right one out in the interwebs) and I can reproduce the effect, I can ask development to see if Fusion can be more tolerant of these seemingly damaged fonts and perhaps we can improve your experience. My number one goal here is to get you productive and happy.

Thanks for posting and helping,

[OFGLLC]

Two files attached as requested in ToAutoDesk.zip.

[Anonymous]

@Phil.E I understand the issue, but also as I asked, can you actually provide a font or font recommendation on the Mac that might work or be compatible or are you saying 0 stencil style fonts will work on the Mac?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply Phil, I am having a lot of problems acheiving what i am trying to do. 

I am trying to make a stamp which will be used to deboss paper. This requires a font ( quicksand ) to be flipped and extruded. 

This should be a simple task but as you can see i have tried entering this manually, inporting as svg, and as dxf format with no success. This is frustrating, I am trying to convince members of my group that learning Fusion 360 would help us save time but am struggling with this functionality. 

Right now it seems like this cannot be acheived with Fusion, hopefully someone can provide a soloution or advise further, 

thanks, 

cd

[Phil.E]

@Anonymous

The common workaround is to explode text like this prior to insertion. Since you have access to a program that can make SVG and DXF, why not explode the text before trying to import those files? The way you show it in the video, those files carry the font that Fusion cannot display which is why they don't work. If any other users want to chime in with their experiences it would be helpful.

If you could provide the dxf and/or svg I can add this to the case I am going to log with the font files attached to this thread.

@Anonymous

The font is usable if installed with Office, which is a possibility for you. The other possibility is to do as suggested above, explode the font outside of Fusion. I will be asking for this to be improved, but any change will be weeks away.

@OFGLLC

Thanks for the files, they can help with the case to improve this.

[Phil.E]

Hi,

Just wanted to report the results:

• The font Stardos installs on Windows and Fusion can use it for 3D.
• When it installs on Mac, OS X gives a warning about 'fpgm table instructions'. Fusion cannot use it.
• A bug report is logged describing this problem.

One workaround that other users have mentioned is to download Inkscape, which is free, and use it to explode text. The output can be imported to Fusion as DXF or SVG.

Thanks,

[OFGLLC]

Just to be clear, I am not complaining.  I know it will get fixed.  I was using Inkscape until the explode option can around, which was fantastic.  I have a PC I can do any font on and 2 MacBooks that have the Office Stencil on them.  I'm good, just looking for perfect.  🙂

[Phil.E]

No problem! I'm glad this helped somewhat and we have plenty for an improvement case.

I'm also looking for perfect, unfortunately computers present all kinds of complex problems and limitations. I'm glad to help and your experience and productivity with Fusion are my top concerns.

Thanks,

[Phil.E]

Hat tip Nate for this great tips and tricks article about bringing in any text to Fusion!

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/post-your-tips-and-tutorials/getting-any-text-and-svg-file-into-fusion...

[OFGLLC]

Phil, This still remains to be a significant problem. Windows and MacOS both use truetype ttf and off font files. These fonts work perfectly on the Windows version. They install and work for everything else except Fusion on the Mac. There is an irritating characteristic of the explode operation in that it "Fix's" all the points in the vectorized characters and they have to be unfixed to move them in the sketch subsequently. However, the main problem that must be affecting every Mac user that is attempting to generate GCode from the CAM side of Fusion or send a DXF file containing text to an external CAM package to feed a 2D CNC machine such as a plasma or laser table. That's got to represent a significant number of users, or at least potential users.