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NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!
3

NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
I remember somebody having a similar problem with NX5.

All the fonts for the menu's in NX 7.5 are now bold and everything looks very ugly and nothing fits quite right; text doesn't fit into some windows, etc.

Last time it was recommended to replace the 'Lucida Sans Unicode Regular'

I have tried to replace this file but I am still exhibiting the problem.

I am pretty sure this came about because some program was uninstalled and has affected windows in some way.

I have tried everything to try and get this to work to no avail.

Any ideas?

 

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
It seems as if it's 'Arial Regular' in this instance, arial.ttf

I still do not know how to fix it yet.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

Have you looked under Preferences-User Interface?

you can Reset Dialog Box Setting in the General tab.

Or in the Layout tab there you are able to change the Window Style via a pull down menu.

 

Best regards,

Michäël.

NX4.0.4.2 MP10 / TCE 9.1.3.8_build_0711 / NX6.0.5.3 + TC8.1 Unified / NX7.0.0.9

Belgium

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
Thanks, but this does not help at all.

My window style is set to 'NX (Recommended)' as it has been all along. Resetting dialog boxes and completely reinstalling NX has no effect at all.

I have uninstalled, deleted all registry entries, removed all entries under AppData and reinstalled and this has not helped at all.

This is a glitch between the Windows font subsystem and NX.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
If I change the window style to 'NX with system font' it works better, however I prefer to have my NX as it should be.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

How about Customer Defaults, there is the same setting under Gateway - User Interface - Layout?

Best regards,

Michäël.

NX4.0.4.2 MP10 / TCE 9.1.3.8_build_0711 / NX6.0.5.3 + TC8.1 Unified / NX7.0.0.9

Belgium

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
No, this is purely the fact that when NX is loading up it cannot find the correct font. It is looking for this in the Windows font subsystem.

John, do you have any advice please?

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

hi,

for no reason all the fonts for the menu's in NX 7.5 are now italic!!!!!


 

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

I had the same problem. I called GTAC and they solved the problem with this procedure:

Check the Display Properties in the Control Panel, select the Appearance tab --> Advanced Button --> select Menu under the Item dropdown --> check to see if the Italics button is pressed to the right of the Font dropdown. If so, turn off the itallics button.

NX uses system settings for displaying menu fonts.

NxPerson
NX6.0.2.8, TcEng8

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
Thanks NXPERSON, but this didn't help me with my problem.

NX only uses system settings for displaying menus when your 'Windows Style' is set to 'NX with system fonts'.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
I have figured out what is causing the problem and I will post details soon about what is causing it and how to fix it.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

2
(OP)
--- TT's NX 7.5 font fix ---

Version: NX 7.5.x
Operating system: Windows 7 x64
Symptom:
NX menu and other NX windows are displaying font incorrectly or displaying wrong font entirely when using the default windows style 'NX (Recommended)' (Preferences -> User Interface ->  Layout -> Windows Style).

Quick fix:
Install 'Lucida Sans' (Lucida Sans Regular) into windows font directory. (C:\Windows\Fonts)

Cause of problem:
Derivative of 'Lucida Sans' (Lucida Sans Regular)' is installed into Windows font directory without original font being present. For example, 'Lucida Sans' (Lucida Sans Regular) is not present in system but 'Lucida Sans' (Lucida Sans Demi Bold) is.

Original font (Lucida Sans Regular)
'Lucida Sans'
Font name: Lucida Sans

Derivative (Lucida Sans Demibold)
'Lucida Sans Demibold'
Font name: Lucida Sans (This has the exact same name as the original 'Lucida Sans' (Lucida Sans Regular))

*Note: Please do not confuse this with 'Lucida Sans Unicode' (Lucida Sans Unicode Regular) as this is a different font set altogether despite the similar name. Leave these alone.

Explanation:
NX searches the Windows fonts directory and there is a specific search for 'Lucida Sans' (Lucida Sans Regular). If 'Lucida Sans' is not installed into the fonts directory but a derivative is, such as 'Lucida Sans Demibold' and it has the same font name (this is not the same thing as a file name. The font name resides inside the font itself and cannot be changed simply by renaming the file.), NX will default to using the derivative and will therefore display the wrong font, in this case, a Demibold version of the font.
One of the quick fixes is to ensure to have 'Lucida Sans' (Lucida Sans Regular) installed into windows or alternatively, remove these derivatives of 'Lucida Sans'.

Please be very careful to note that there are other versions of Lucida Sans such as 'Lucida Sans Unicode', which has a font name of: 'Lucida Sans Unicode'. This is a different name than 'Lucida Sans' and should not affect NX at all. In fact, it is advised not to remove these files as they are used by other programs as well as by NX.
On a windows system, if you double click a font file it will bring up a preview of the font, as well as displaying the font name for you to see. This is a better albeit slower way of checking the font names. After removing these derivatives of Lucida Sans, NX should return to normal.

I hope this helps, and perhaps if you have a problem with another font, this may guide you to resolve it. I have attached a 'Lucida Sans' (Lucida Sans Regular) font file for your convenience.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
I would like to point out that this is an issue with the Windows font subsystem itself and the blame cannot be squarely placed on NX's shoulders as other applications are affected as well.

The creator of the derivative font file can also be to blame since there really should not be a stand-alone derivative of the font using the same font name.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

While one might THINK that the problem is with Windows (i.e., Microsoft) I'd be a little careful placing the blame quite yet.

OK, how does NX work.  If you set using...

Preferences -> User Interface -> Layout

...the Windows Style as 'NX (Recommended)' NX will use the MS Windows supplied font 'Lucida Sans Unicode Regular' (this is always our first choice), and if that is not found it will 'fail-over' (as has already been described) to one of the other 'Lucida' style fonts, often the Italics version.

Now if you select in Preferences the Windows Style 'NX with System Font' then you will get whatever font is the Windows default.

OK, that explains what is supposed to happen, but how is it that your system is losing fonts and therefore forcing NX to use a substitute, often one which is less than desirable.  Well it turns out that we've been starting to get more complaints about this and the only common 'thread' that we've been able to identify is that this seems to happen after certain software packages have installed on your system (note that NONE of these are Siemens PLM Software products so we're not doing it to ourselves ;-).

Now I don't want to name names, but for those of you who have had this problem, have you recently installed any new software on your system?  And if so, what?

Note that we have a 'culprit' in mind, but until we get more feedback, we can't be 100% sure and even if we did nail this down, I'm not sure how we could solve this problem since even if we made sure that 'Lucida Sans Unicode Regular' font was properly installed on the system when we did an NX install, there's no way to prevent some other install script from coming along later and removing that font file.  Anyway, any information that you can provide us will be appreciated.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
John,

In my case, 'Lucida Sans Unicode Regular' was still properly installed but NX failed to get to it for some reason or another. I cannot begin to fathom why it was defaulting to a derivative of Lucida Sans, in my case, Lucida Sans Demibold; which is in the same font group/family.

Let me just state that I am 100% certain of this. I spent a lot of hours trying to figure out this problem only to discover what I describe above.

It was indeed another application that caused this grief and whilst I cannot be certain, I suspect it may have been PTC CoCreate that I was testing. This caused me many hours of grief.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
John,

I just created myself a broken 'Lucida Sans Regular' font, installed it into the windows fonts directory (C:\Windows\Fonts), started up NX and sure enough, it loads my broken Lucida Sans Regular font before anything else.

I can post a link to the broken font so you can install it into your font directory and I am willing to bet you'll have the same problem.

I have tested this on my Desktop (which was the original problem) and I have tested this now on my Laptop which never displayed this problem before.

Deleting the font fixes the problem straight away. (In fact, it fixes it without even closing NX when you move your mouse cursor over menu items again, if windows lets you delete it, which I've been able to do several times.)

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
Just thought I'd note that I'm on Windows 7 x64, running NX 7.5 64bit.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

On my Windows 7 system I don't even have the 'Lucida Sans' font, but I do have 'Lucida San Unicode Regular' and it works just fine, which is what our UI people told me I should see.

Note that in addition to 'Lucida Sans Unicode Regular', I also have the following 'Lucida' style fonts:

Lucida Bright
Lucida Calligraphy Italic
Lucida Console Regular
Lucida Fax
Lucida Handwriting Italic

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
John,

Yes Lucida Sans Regular doesn't come with Windows 7 by default, BUT, it is installed by other programs at times and THIS is where my problem came in.

If you can confirm you exhibit the same problem on your system, I would be relieved to know that it's not a problem with my systems configuration and is a glitch in NX itself.

I would just like to point out that 'Lucida Bright' is not actually a part of the 'Lucida Sans Regular' family in the technical sense, even though it is literally a derivative.

If you examine the font name itself, it is 'Lucida Bright'.

If you have a look at the broken Lucida Sans Regular font I posted, double clicking on it, examine the font name (this is actually what determines whether it is in the same group or not), you can see that the 'A' & 'a' letters are broken, as well as terrible spacing issues.

On all my systems, whenever 'Lucida Sans Regular' is installed, NX uses this font and not 'Lucida Sans Unicode Regular'.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

Are you saying that the 'Lucida Sans Regular' font file which some installation scripts are adding to Windows 7 is what's causing the problems?

Does that mean that the font file which is being added has somehow been modified in such as way as to cause problems with NX?

Note that I tested the 'tainted' font file and I see the corrupt letters, but I also copied (from an older Windows XP system) a clean version of the 'Lucida Sans Regular' font file over to my Windows 7 system and it worked with no problems.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

OK, I think we've gotten it straight now, at least as to how NX is supposed to be working, which is not quite as I originally described it.

Now first off, in my defense, when running an out-of-the-box Windows 7 system, it does work as I described, that is the NX uses the 'Lucida Sans Unicode Regular' font since that is the ONLY 'Lucida Sans' font on the system, and key words here is 'Lucida Sans'.  We checked the actual source code and spoke with the programmer responsible for that code and this is how it works:

NX is looking for a font with the name 'Lucida Sans', period.  Now there are several fonts which uses the words 'Lucida Sans' in them, including a Regular font, an Italic font and a Bold font, and if all THREE are there (sometimes combined together into a single item named simply 'Lucida Sans') NX will use the 'Regular' font.  If the Regular font is missing, but the Italic font is present, it will opt for that font.  And if it's not there, then it will use the Bold font.  Only if there are no other 'Lucida Sans' style fonts available will NX move on to the 'Lucida Sans Unicode Regular', which of course is the situation with an out-of-the-box Windows 7 installation.

Now you may be wondering what happens if there are NO 'Lucida Sans' style fonts of any kind there?  Well it turns out that there is a font named 'Lucida Console Regular' which is present on both Windows XP and Windows 7 systems, and it turns out that you CAN'T delete that font since it's hardcoded by Windows as IT'S default system font, so in a worst case scenario, this becomes the font that's used when NX starts using the so-called 'Recommended' Windows Style.

So now you know WAY more than you probably ever wanted to know, but it should help explain what's happening and why.

So what's the solution to these problems discussed earlier in this thread?

Well if you somehow ended up with a bad 'Lucida Sans Regular' font file, replace it with a good one.  And if that's not possible and you don't want to use [i]Italic[/] or Bold fonts, then delete them as well and just use the Unicode or the default Console version of the Lucida fonts.  Other than that, we don't really have anything else to recommend.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
John,

The problem in my case is that the Regular (Non bold or italic) version was removed from my system by some other program but I had another Bold (Non Regular) version that was left behind and this is what caused me to experience this problem.

My particular problem was caused by 'Lucida Sans Demibold', which is still part of the Lucida Sans font family.

Since I did not have a Regular (non bold/italic) version on the system, NX failed over to the Lucida Sans Demibold version, which lead to everything in my menu using the Demibold version, despite having other normal fonts such as Lucida Sans Unicode.

This behaviour seems less than idle to be honest, and this is what caused my problem.

One would think that 'NX (Recommended)' windows style would aim for fonts either included in the NX install itself or perhaps look for very specific fonts in the Windows Font library.

At the end of the day, it's not up to me but I do consider NX to be one of the best systems in this day, but the fact is that my hours of grief of reinstalling NX multiple times was caused by the fact that there was a font, a single font, which was a perfectly working font, installed into the windows font directory.

Installing programs, one expects new fonts to be installed into the font directory and just this one action could possibly break NX.

NX continues to function, but text does not fit properly into some windows which makes things harder/slower in terms of user/designer performance.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
Obviously, I would like to add that I have fixed my system but this situation is easy to find in the wild and this information should help other NX users who experience these problems to sort out their systems without requiring to reinstall the whole of Windows.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

Our installation scripts generally do not attempt to either install or reinstall system fonts (note that this policy may change in the future, but not because of this issue).  Rather we implemented NX in such a manner that it leverages the basic set of fonts included with, in this case, Windows.  'Lucida' is one of those basic fonts which are included with all Windows installations so it was chosen as the safest route to go (for the so-called 'NX (Recommended)' Windows Style).

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

(OP)
I understand, but as an NX user, this is the problem that I experienced and the reason why I experienced this problem.

I understand your position completely and I'm not trying to tell you any different.

This is how I fixed my NX. At the end of the day, NX installed perfectly fine and it was another program which caused this problem but I am willing to bet people will continue to encounter this problem.

RE: NX 7.5 font problem - ARGH!

I'm willing to bet that as well, and there is even speculation as why this situation may exist, but THAT discussion is for another time and another place.

In the end, there is absolutely nothing which we can do to avoid problems created by other vendors.  Even IF our installation script had verified the presence of the proper font files (and installed copies if they were not present), there is NOTHING that we can do if a subsequent installation of some other vendor's software causes these same font files to be removed and/or modified in such as manner as to make them unusable/unacceptable with the previously installed version of NX.  That's reality, pure and simple.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

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