Stick-fonts for sketches

[Jim Peyton]

We are using CAMworks and would like to do some engraving with it.

The way Solidworks treats fonts in a sketch is to add thickness to them.
(which makes perfect sense, as you couldn't create a feature from zero-width
text)

Well, Camworks wants to trace around the letters instead of tracing the
letters' centerline. This doubles the length of time required to engrave
text, produces inferior looking parts, plus it's just conceptually wrong.

Any ideas on an available stick-font?

Any CAMworks users out there against the same issue?

It's hard to justify buying an engraving package after burning $4.5k on a
CAM system.

Thanks,
Jim Peyton
Kinemetrix Industrial Design & Mfg.

[Darryl Jenkins]

Hi Jim,

I went thru this with some molds we produced last year.

Two things came to haunt me, 1) no centre line trace, 2) curves became
segmented straight lines when importing or cut and pasting.

I tried Byron's text program, its good for text in the round and other
effects, but we weren't carving large lettering, then I tried importing dxf
sketches from CorelDraw (see point 2), and I also created a new font, but
again (see point 2). SolidWorks please take note re: importing arcs as arcs,
not segments.

So I ended up creating a library of stick font characters within SW by
following some typographic rules regarding character and feature heights,
widths and kerning (spacing between letters).

I don't think this is what you really wanted to hear, but it works.

--
Darryl Jenkins
Symplistic Engineering
Perth, Western Australia

Jim Peyton <jpe...@kinemetrix.com> wrote in message
news:htG67.16842$sE4.3...@news6.giganews.com...

[Jim Peyton]

I had mentally looked down the path of creating my own SWX sketch font of
sorts and it didn't look appealing at all. Especially the thought of
engraving several sentences of text. (AAAACCHHT!!!)

Hey Solidworks development folks, this might be a small segment of the
market, but a check-box in the sketch-text dialog to select "centerline
only" text would be a real benefit to guys like us. The more manufacturers
that get turned onto CAMworks (by rave reviews from users), the more seats
of SWX go out the door.

-Jim Peyton

Kinemetrix Industrial Design & Mfg.

"Darryl Jenkins" <sym...@iinet.net.au> wrote in message
news:3b5b7a25$0$30...@echo-01.iinet.net.au...

[Dawgbone]

This isn't just a CAMworks problem. I do engraving all the time with
Mastercam and Surfcam. I must do all the text in the cam package. I
can't find a way to create or export single stroke fonts in
Solidworks. The raised letters that I do from Solidworks are ok,
though some fonts seem to create a series of lines rather than arcs or
splines.