Aligning Text to center

[rob.holmesBKLJD]

Hi All,

I might be going mad but I'm trying to align a bit of text to the center of the rectangle. This text will need to be changed a lot so I want the text to remain centered. At the moment it seems you can only align text using the bottom left hand point in Fusion 360. The text has a rectangle around it but when the text is changed its recreated losing any coincident's you manage to set on it. 

Any ideas? I'd rather not have to align my text by eye every time.

Thank You

Rob

[James.Youmatz · Accepted solution]

Hi @rob.holmesBKLJD,

Welcome to the Fusion 360 Community!

So I have seen this come up a couple of times now. Check out this screencast I created with my methodology:

[rob.holmesBKLJD]

Thank You James, I'll follow this and see what happens. Shame there isn't an easier way but hopefully future versions will change this.

[Anonymous]

I that seriously the only way to center text! That is a lot of work.

[Anonymous]

Any better way of doing this?

I´m having the same issue, I need to engrave a bunch of nameplates.

I can nicely dimension the text and center it using midpoint constraints but all those constraints and dimensions vanish when I change the text.

The posted "solution" is ridiculous and doesnt deserve the name. Furthermore it doesnt even show what happens once you change the text and that´s the whole point of the authors and my question.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I always appreciate a workaround, but cleary no acceptable solution here yet. Fusion team please improve the behavior of text in sketches.

Thanks,

Rod.

[adamsd5]

As a side-note, the screen casts are great, truly excellent.  It's something that sets Fusion 360 apart from the crowd.  It would be even better if there were a short description of the solution in text when links to the screen casts are placed here.  I often don't need to watch the whole cast to know what to do.  Hint me in the right direction with text so I don't have to watch a whole cast to get the idea.

In this case something like "There is no such feature, but draw a rectangle around the text and measure it, and offset by the computed amounts." would have saved me about 5 minutes.

Anyhow, keep up the good work and great product!  (And yes, please add a text-centering option.)

[Anonymous]

I have a slightly different way that takes less time, though you'll still have to do it for each individual text element. I'm sure I'm using some of the terminology wrong, but:

1. On your main object's sketch, add a vertical line and a horizontal line, centered on where you want to center your text.
2. On a new sketch, add your text away from the main body of the item you want to emboss.
3. Draw a line from the bottom midpoint of the text (indicated by a snap and a little triangle) to the top of the text.
4. From the line you just drew, add a line from the its middle extending off to the right a little bit.
5. Add collinear constraints between the vertical lines and horizontal lines you made.

[briankb]

Thanks for sharing that tip! Took me a minute to get it to work but now I can do it reliably. I do hope Autodesk will add more tool options for the Text tool in Fusion360 sooner than later.

From your technique I created a 5m screencast. I stumble a few times but the entire process from start to finish is there included doing an extruded cut into a body with the text. 

[etfrench]

Seems like a lot of work when you could just use a midpoint constraint after creating the vertical line centered on the text. 

This thread may be of some use.

[ChrisHeerschap]

Total agreement that this seems like a complete hack and an ugly way to do what should a simple, common thing.

Just about anything that works with formatting fonts has the ability to align it any way that's desired, whether that's left aligned, right aligned, or centered. Arbitrarily locking us down to a lower left reference point and then having to watch a 3 minute video on how to get around that limitation is kinda maddening.

...and yes, I intentionally centered this entire post as a reminder that this is a really basic thing that can be done just about everywhere except Fusion 360.

I ❤️ Fusion 360 - it's better than CAD software I was selling when I started my career that cost $10k a seat and required hardware that cost at least that much again - but little things like this are just a bit bothersome.

[BrainSlugs83]

Honestly, you can just do it with two horizontal lines and a midpoint constraint... -- But yeah, this is pretty ridiculous that you can't just center the text... Maybe importing from something like inkscape would be easier...

[Anonymous]

That doesn't solve the immediate problem: the text's bounding box is taller than the text, so it ends up too low

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

That doesn't solve the immediate problem: the text's bounding box is taller than the text, so it ends up too low

---

Exactly, while the construct lines and alignment is easy enough and aligns the textbox, it doesn't in any way align the text as it will be stuck to the bottom left of the box no matter what (and what about a font preview when choosing text). The size you give sets the height of the box, NOT the height of the text. Currently I'm trying to do a very simple design with just one digit centered in a circle and it's turning into a nightmare project for a newbie like me.

[etfrench]

Did you read the thread I linked to in an earlier post?  In order to center text, you need to first determine how much white space Fusion 360 adds to each font at the size you want to use.  Once you have this, use dimensions from the bounding rectangle to the center of your circle to place the text.

If you're still having trouble with this, attach your file to the thread (use the File menu: File|Export|Archive file *.f3d).

[Anonymous]

I looked at the video in the linked thread and I'm still as clueless as to what was going on there I'm afraid. Surely that's an absurd amount of work and calculations needed for something as simple as centering a letter.

[etfrench]

You are right however it's the only way to currently center text accurately and semi-parametrically.

Here's the lazy man's way:

[Anonymous]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. That last method worked perfectly and was soo easy to use. I also figured out to use the measure method to get the exact size that fit within my object (the measures distance actually affect the size of the text, not the box). Now I have my 3 first gaming token prototypes ready to print.

[Anonymous]

Not to be a d*@*... But, ummm... is Autodesk short on microphones?

You are dimensioning things... But, what?  I mean, I am on a projection of something, at an angle, trying to follow along with what you are doing.

The problem is that, if we do not understand the theory/concept, then you are leaving us (even if it works the first time) with no way to repeat the process in other projects.  

Why would you do that to us?

[Anonymous]

When centering a single letter, the work is quite easy. 

A construction Line, four points, and three vertical horizontal constraints need to be added to each letter.  And yes that's a bit of a pain.

Steps:

1 - Create a center anchor point for the letter 

2. - Create the letter slightly above and slightly to the right of its center anchor point.

add a construction line from the lower left corner up the side even with the top of the letter or number.

3. - Add three points

   - add a point to the midpoint of the construction line you just created.  It will be below the midpoint of the longer construction line that makes up the bounding box for the text.

 - add a point to the center of the bottom construction line

 - add a point to the center of the top construction line

4.  Add horizontal and vertical constraints

-  add a horizontal/vertical constraint between the top and bottom points that you added

-  add a horizontal/vertical constraint between the point where you want the letter to the point on the side of the bounding box

- add a horizontal/vertical constraint to the point on bottom of the bounding box

A bit of extra work due to the lack of a center point for the letter and a bounding box for the font that is not the same shape as the font.