Inaccurate Text Sizing

[cshaw89]

Hi, 

 

I'm running VW 2019 Student Version on Mojave.  I am having trouble getting the accurate mm size on my text.  I am trying to create 3mm text and convert that text to polylines.  I set the "page millimeters" to 3 in the set size window.  After typing my word and converting to polylines the Object info pallet shows that the height of my letters is only 2.063 (see image below). Is there some sort of difference between page mm and standard mm? Is there a doc setting I need to adjust? 

 

My end goal is to be able to convert to polylines, group and be able to place based off of the top/center of the group.  If there is a solution that just includes resizing my polylines after converting text and then being able to grab based off of the top center resizing box (when I try to grab that box I am only able to use the resizing function not the move function--see second image) I would be happy with that too. 

 

Thank you!

[Pat Stanford]

I think it is not working the way you want because the font contains extra space above and below the actual characters. Take a look at the Vertical Alignment options Top Base line and Bottom baseline. Also, I believe that internally all font sized are kept in points, so whatever you enter will be rounded to the nearest 10th of a point.

 

You will have to enter the text you want and then measure to see what you have and then scale the text so it is the real world 3 mm you want.      

 

I just inserted a piece of text using Arial with a Page Size of 3mm. It inserted as 8.5 point. I then drew horizontal lines at the top and bottom of a capital letter I (i).

 

They measure 2.145 mm. But some of the other character (number 3, lowercase s, probably others I did not try everything) match the top line, but extend past the bottom line. You will have to decide where you want to measure from and what should actually be 3 mm.

 

I selected the text block and used the Scale Object:Symmetric By Distance option to measure what the current distance is  and entered 3mm as the New Distance and the text scaled to be 3mm in height (measured from the capital I). Make sure you have the Scale Text check box checked and don't have the Entire Drawing check box checked.

 

[cshaw89]

@Pat Stanford I did all of those things as well (before posting while trouble shooting).  I need my text to be all Capitals and there will be no numbers or symbols so measuring to one should give me a pretty uniform 3mm across the board. I noticed the difference in extra space above and bellow (which I measured and is also not 3mm after setting).  Are you saying that there is a way to adjust the Top and  Bottom Baselines? If so--where?

 

As for the rescaling--I did that but until I am able to adjust the baseline I'm not able to snap to the geometry of the letters so the By Distance scaling option won't be totally accurate--is there a way to snap to the font itself if those baseline alignments are unchangeable? 

 

Thank you again!

[Pat Stanford]

None of the options you want exist in VW at this time.

 

Best option is to do the best you can with getting the font close as discusses above. Then Convert Text to Polylines. Then rescale again if necessary.

 

When I did this I was zoomed in almost 1000% when I did the initial measurement. When I measured the converted polylines I did get snap points and measured 3.003 mm.

 

Do you need accuracy of better than 0.1%?

[cshaw89]

@Pat Stanford Alright, I'll use that workaround.  My hope was that these would match drawings to be machined as best as possible but I can make the fix in the CAM software.  Thanks again for all of your input and definitive answers--I would have been hunting for something that doesn't exist for hours!