Son of a... Why is text so hard?

[Anonymous]

A big chunk of what I use Fusion 360 for is driving my XCarve gantry router. That involves a fair amount of cutting text for signs and plaques and whatnot.

But any given font choice may or may not work as an extrusion, and may or may not be able to be exploded into component curves. It will render and type just fine, giving no indication that the font is in any way "flawed" - and then *bam* - error message on extrusion or exploding.

Oh, and this is *after* the inordinate amount of time it took laying the text out, given that you cannot centre text relative to its own text box, or change fonts on the same line, or apply different attributes (like bold) on the same line....

It boggles my mind that all those programmer hours were put into a new UI and yet *text handling* is still non-functional.

[jhackney1972]

You mention three complains, in the last part of your post, against the Text command in Fusion 360.  Take a look at my screencast and I will show you that all three are not justified. If I missed something in your post, please let me know.  The complain about the text not creating a closed profile is probably due to poor font quality that you are using and not a problem with Fusion 360.

[Anonymous]

1. The font is supplied by Adobe, so it is as good of a font as you will ever get. Besides, if the UI is capable of rendering it on screen correctly, then there is enough geometry information in the font to convert it to curves. It's the same logic.

2. Any technique for centering text that requires you to draw construction lines is little better than a hack and may be charitably described as a "temporary workaround".  Seriously. As soon as I saw you draw the first construction line, I stopped watching, because that's just silly.

3. Your technique does not allow for italic, bold, strikethrough etc on the same line.

In other words, the text handling on this forum is better than the native text handling in Fusion 360. Unacceptable!

[TrippyLighting]

@jhackney1972 Depending on what font you select you'll run into exactly those problems.

I am not sure these are system fonts supplied by the OS of choice (Windows or MacOS) or if those are part of the Fusion 360 universe. The other CAD tool I use does not have that problem and an equivalent et (or the same ?) font works flawlessly.

@Anonymous I guess this is just a matter of priority of what to improve first. The new UI has some technical improvements under the hood that to an individual user are not necessarily visible. The new layout was chosen to allow better integration of other tools in the future.

[Anonymous]

> I guess this is just a matter of priority of what to improve first.

Well it needs to get placed higher up the priority list then. Broken font handling and a text box that was eclipsed by PowerPoint in 1995 are major dissatisfiers - especially when "that other CAD tool" has no problems.

And for the record, yes, there are heavily artistic fonts that really push the boundaries of how the TrueType/PostScript font render engine works. Fonts that simulate brush strokes, paint spatter, make a lot of use of negative space or otherwise have hundreds of splines per glyph etc - I expect those to be iffy and would understand if they proved unworkable. But Helvetica?

[TrippyLighting]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Well it needs to get placed higher up the priority list then. Broken font handling and a text box that was eclipsed by PowerPoint in 1995 are major dissatisfiers - especially when "that other CAD tool" has no problems.

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That other CAD tool is a $3000 license with a $600 regular annual update fee or $900 from any prior version.

You have to be careful what you are asking for!

[jeff_strater]

When deciding what to prioritize, we have to take into account what the entire range of Fusion users want us to prioritize.  I could point you to 100 other threads where similar sentiments were expressed about X feature or Y feature, or even Z bug.  But, in the end, we have to prioritize what the widest % of Fusion users need to get their jobs done.  I appreciate the frustration, I really do, because right now, text for you is a significant pain point.  And yes, Powerpoint has better text handling capabilities, and so do other, more established CAD tools.  But, not all users need text.  We'll get to it eventually, I'm sure of that.  But, it has not until now been the "high pole in the tent".

[psych_uk]

Having used text myself, I have to agree with the OP.

Text management is woeful.

Personally I believe text should be rendered by dimension, not font size, or line height, like an SVG, and should fill it's bounding rectangle. Dimensioning (is that even a word?) is Fusion 101, according to most people during design, yet text follows it's own rules. Drop some text onto any surface and resize it, rotate it, or change its font size, and you will see what I mean. Scale-ability is impossible.

That being said, I doubt text is a serious feature that the team care about, so you just have to settle with what you have, I tend to do what I want with text, then lock up and never touch it again.

[Anonymous]

>That other CAD tool is a $3000 license with a $600 regular annual update fee or $900 from any prior version.

Oh no it isn’t. That other CAD tool now has a free personal use licence for small makers and whatnot just like Fusion does. 

Honestly, what is keeping me on Fusion right now is the network functionality - I have a “design studio” and then PCs at my machine stations. The ability to do the design, then pull it up at the machine (possibly for tweaks) without having to copy files around is very useful, and I’ve gotten used to it. But if this basic usability stuff doesn’t get fixed, eventually the time lost working around poor functionality will dominate the time saved by the cloud features and it will become worth switching. 

[daniel_lyall]

@Anonymous Just one question how are you using the text in cam?

I do not know what you know and yer text needs more work done to it.

You do not need to do exploded text or anything like that for cam.

@jeff_strater  how does the sizing of text work the rectangle in it is to the size you set the letter height is shorter or what is the gap.

[Anonymous]

> Just one question how are you using the text in cam?

Typical workflow:

1. Design part to be engraved (could be as simple as insert sketch on XY plane, draw rectangle, dimension, close sketch, extrude);

2. Insert sketch on face of object to be engraved;

3. Select text tool, click on sketch, type letters, set font and size;

4. Pay a bunch of silly games with construction lines and whatnot aligning text to part or part features (could be as simple as centering text on extruded rectangle, but sometimes text needs to be aligned relative to a hole or whatever);

5. Exit sketch;

6. Select "extrude", click on text from sketch, get error message about how text cannot be extruded;

7. Swear. Gnash teeth. Pull hair. Weep;

8. Reopen sketch. Select text. Change font and size;

9. Redo all alignment and positioning because the text box in the text tool has no real effect over alignment and positioning the way the (say) PowerPoint text box does;

10. Exit sketch;

11. Select "extrude", click on text - bam! Error message again;

12. Renewed cycle of rage, frustration, and despair;

13. Decide to utilize font that is known to work, despite loss of artistic integrity. Alternatively, if font is an absolute requirement because of logo or whatever, go looking for alternative close matches, and install a bunch more fonts;

14. After as many iterations as it takes, eventually arrive at a font that the extrude tool will accept. Set depth of extruded cut. Extrude tool cuts text into object;

15. Open Appearances dialog. Select a paint colour (usually what the finished product will look like). Select "faces", then drag paint sphere one at a time to each text face in the extruded cut;

16. Go to CAM. Use either 2D or 3D Adaptive Clearing or Engraving to cut text, depending on font choice and/or final design intent. When possible, use rest machining to minimize use of very small end mills (sometimes needed to get into thin sections);

17. Sometimes, discover that a font section is too thin for my smallest endmill and is not a good candidate for the engraving V bit. Then go back to step 8 to increase font size enough to get an endmill in there;

18. Cut.

I have also done:

1. Design part;

2. Open Adobe Illustrator;

3. Set artboard size to the extends of the object to be engraved;

4. Draw a few reference features from the part in Illustrator - annoying because Illustrator is not CAD so workflow to accurately locate lines etc absolutely to the artboard is clunky (but doable);

5. Select Text tool, and drop text in wherever needed, with super-rapid alignment, centering, multiple fonts and styles on same line, etc;

6. Once text all located, "Select All. Text, Convert to Outlines". Save as SVG;

7. Back in Fusion, create sketch on surface to be engraved, Import SVG;

8. Curse and swear because SVG import does not come in at same size as SVG was saved;

9. Manually scale/move SVG until reference marks in SVG line up with reference marks on part;

10. Save sketch, extrude, and off we go.

Here's what I want to do:

1. Insert sketch;

2. Select text tool;

3. Draw text box;

4. Set constraints / dimensions on text box border to accurately locate text box on part;

5. Type text in text box using whatever mix of fonts and styles I want at whatever size I want that fits inside the text box. For bonus points, include kerning/leading features so spacing between characters and between lines is controlled. Text box also has left, centre, right justify controls; and

6. Exit sketch, select extrude, and extrude always works.

[TrippyLighting]

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@Anonymous wrote:

>That other CAD tool is a $3000 license with a $600 regular annual update fee or $900 from any prior version.

Oh no it isn’t. That other CAD tool now has a free personal use licence for small makers and whatnot just like Fusion does. 

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Oh, yes it is. I work with CAD professionally and that requires a license. The CAD software I use also does NOT offer a free hobbyist license. It isn't SolidWorks BTW.

[daniel_lyall]

Yer when you need to use endmills or ball/bullnose endmills you have to extrude it.

IF 10,000 users (with a large % being commercial users) jumped up and said or demanded that text gets fixed there is a high chance it will move up the list of what needs to be done.

[steven2BAQB]

The text management of Fusion is shameful.  Furthermore, the repeated denial of this by developers is beyond belief.  What decade are you living in?

The fact that 90% of my fonts will not extrude without a workaround is just the start of this madness.  The UI is terrible;  It is missing basic functionality, is non-intuitive, and painful to use.  This is a perfect example of a product designed by stubborn, ignorant engineers, with absolutely no input from artists or real users.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, this helped a lot, ... but I have to agree with the sentiment that text in F360 is a pain.

It was easier in Autosketch in 1990s.  Life has got a lot worse since then.

[daniel_lyall]

They are going to make text way better than it is now it's under the sketch article here  https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/fusion-360-roadmap-update-2020/#Sketching 

[Anonymous]

Highly unimpressed.. This update looks very 'digital' (in the sense of
pretty shoddy; part of the 'please wait' culture; almost working; ten
thousand useless features I have to work out how to turn off; something
that needs a brain the size of a planet to be able to add 2 to 2).

What I need is something that works, how about a fix rather than an update?

[vogeljames]

Why hasn’t text been fixed yet?

A $350 tool for CNC (VECTRIC VCARVE DESKTOP) is SO much easier to use for text.

Fusion is such wonderful software, it’s really too bad it sucks so much at something so simple. 

[daniel_lyall]

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-feedback-hub/open-feedback-on-upcoming-text/td-p/9537505