Letters / Text

[Chris Rizzo]

Have to do a bunch of text engraving.. Letter spacing, line spacing, layout, etc. is very important. Customer sent me a word doc. I figured that I would get the cleanest letters if I created them with create>letters...but it is impossible to get the layout the same as the original word document.

Anybody have any slick methods of importing a .doc file? I thought of taking a screen shot, and saving as a JPEG, then importing with raster to vector. Also going to try importing as an ASCII.

Thanks.

[Chris Rizzo]

Sorry, should also have mentioned that the ASCII converter isn't working..."illegal spline. too few points"..

[Scott Bond]

Hi CMR

For a slam dunk,,,

Bring up your doc in your editor..

Then copy , and paste as a createdraftingnote..

Then Modifybreakdraft-line..

 

For an exact copy---rasper to vecter.

Scott

[Rekd™]

cmr

 

There's a proggie called RTFtoDXF. I haven't used it, but you might give it a look.

 

Web site

 

'Rekd teh I don't get a paycheck, I get a bill

[Chris Rizzo]

Thanks for the ideas folks.

 

-Copy>paste will just get the text in, but not the formatting and spacing of the original doc.

 

-Raster to Vector could work, but will take a bunch of cleanup.

 

-Rekd, that link "cannot find remote server"...but that sounds exactly what I'm looking for.

 

I'll let y'all know what I get to work. This initially seemed like a clean-cut job, but is turning into an adventure. Mastercam is not the greatest text editor, not that I'd expect it to be either. But for example the letter spacing for New Times Roman is completly unacceptable. I'd have to manually go in and adjust all the letter spacing. It seems like engraving shops must have this down some way or another....

 

Well, I should get to working on it, instead of talking about working on it!

Thx again

[Rekd™]

Try This

 

'Rekd teh Check yer work

[BK]

What if you use Create, Next Menu, Letters, then select True Type. If you have the same font as the original doc you should be able to match it perfectly. If there's a lot of text, Copy the text from the doc and then paste it in the MC dialog box.

HTH,

BK

[Zero]

Ahhhh yes... This TTF to DXF looks pretty slick rekd. Thanks for the link, I'm sure this'll come in handy someday soon.

 

 

....heh...I never realized there was a Create Letters in MC All these years I've been slaaping down drafting text's and tracing them DOH

 

[ 05-13-2003, 04:54 PM: Message edited by: Zero ]

[Allan Brown]

Zero - Double Doh! - You can Modify Break Draft/line to break drafting letters into chainable entities.

[Noel]

Thats the beauty of this forum.One mans doh! Can help prevent another mans. It's easy to get boxed in to one way of doing things.This forum chalenges us to be better.Keep up the good work!

 

 

Noel

 

[ 05-13-2003, 05:19 PM: Message edited by: Dr. Olds ]

[Chris Rizzo]

Downloaded that program, ttf to dxf...had high hopes. It opened my .doc file just fine, but then when I saved and imported the .dxf to mcam, it lost all the formatting. It imported the text just fine, but ditched all the formatting (line spacing, centering, etc.). Appears to have imported the TTF (true type font), but not the TTF (true type formatting)!

 

In a nutshell, it gave me the exact same thing as

 

create>drafting>note>paste> modify>break>draft/line

 

Imports the letters (font), but does not import the overall layout. For example, my text document is centered. However both the importing/converting and cutting and pasting right justifies everything.

 

I'll keep trying, but I've resorted to creating a grid and laying the text out manually.

Now if I could only find some lead type.......

[Zero]

ahAhAHAhAHAAh

 

/me smacks his head against the table repeatedly

 

 

Hey, at least I can trace really fast now ...

 

[ 05-14-2003, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: Zero ]

[P_Scott]

cmr,

 

An alternative would be to try the Create-Drafting-Note and select the "Load File" button. I tried this with a file I use but it had .bmp's and other things in it which wouldn't come in. Perhaps just a plain .doc would be better. If it doesn't look good, at least it's a note and can be deleted as one entity. HTH

[Chris Rizzo]

Thanks Peter,

 

That is yet another good way to get the text in...BUT the formatting doesn't make it. It seems crazy that all the methods we can come up with import the text just fine, but strips the line spacing and layout. If it can get the letter spacing ok, why not the line spacing?

 

After all, it's just a bunch of 1's and 0's.

10101011110000001110000111001010101010101111

[Mike Annetts]

Excuse my ignorance but how do you "paste" text into Mastercams text dialogue box. I tried it with no success.

Thanks

Mike

[Chris Rizzo]

First go find some text.

Highlight it>Right click>copy text..

 

Go back into Mcam.

create>drafting>note

 

right click in the white dialog box.

>paste

 

you can also go into properties and change font, etc.

[Surface]

I was able to do just what you are looking for by cut and paste from Word into Corel. I then exported as an Illustrator EPS file. Formatting and font apear to be the same. I exported about 30 words with different fonts and letter spacing. It came in as 1020 lines and 535 splines.

 

[ 05-15-2003, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: Surface ]