Drawing font gap factor - Hershey-sans 1

[mag00]

Hello all.

I'm changing company drawing's border/mask. As we use some Latin characters (eg.: ç, ã, õ, é, í, ó, ú) I'll change the default drawing font and I have elected the Hershey-Sans font as the best one.

But, this font don't changes the text gap factor and I can't figure out why this is happening.

Can you help me with that? There's something that I can do to make the gap factor works with this font?

Thanks.

Gerson Fioravanti Junior
Mechanical Production Engineer

 

[Toost]

I assume that you are using a older version of NX. NX8.5 introduced Truetype fonts.
The font you have selected is a "fixed spacing" font. As is, there is not that much you can do about it unless you get help from some NX support person who has been around for many years
and has the knowledge to edit the font for you .

The old Unigraphics fonts can be "Fixed / Variable/ Overlap-Spacing". Most of these fonts are either "variable" or "Overlap". I think that the "Latin-extended" is a "overlap-spacing" font.
( i recommend the Latin-Extended font in case you will select a unigraphics font.)
See more on

https://docs.plm.automation.siemens...2250:file_fil_util_characterfonts_d:xid280697

Regards,
Tomas

 

[mag00]

Hello Tomas.

Thanks for your feedback.

We are using NX 9 here. I noticed these TTF available in NX and I suggested one of them to be the new font, but due to an older bad experience with fonts inside CAD systems, the guys that could approve the font change don't want to use a font that is not native to NX.

It seems that they had a system change from CATIA to NX on past and the font on drawings was a big issue during conversion.

Some data associated to latin characters was lost because of NX don't support them on that time. It caused a lot of rework to old drawings.

I believe that the case is: What happens when I export a drawing with a TTF?

If the person that is receiving the PRT file don't have the same font what NX will show up? NX changes the font to an alternative?

If I use native fonts I can guarantee that this will not happens in the future.

One more question: There is a way to know if the font is "fixed space" without test it directly on NX? There is any documentation or list for native fonts with this information?

Thanks again.

Gerson Fioravanti Junior
Mechanical Production Engineer

 

[BubbaK]

It's easy to edit old-style NX fonts with an app called FontFactory. This is available in numerous places. Make sure you get version 3.0 or 3.001.

https://community.plm.automation.si...hey-fonts-can-we-make-this-sticky/td-p/322996

I don't know what the "text gap factor" is. But I notice that the Hershey-Sans font has a "character spacing" value of zero. If NX is multiplying this number by some factor to adjust inter-character spacing, then it won't have any effect (since anything times zero is still zero). You can change this using FontFactory.

Latin-Extended is ugly as hell. The Hershey fonts are much nicer, and they have more characters, too.

 

[mag00]

Hello BubbaK.

The text gap factor is exactly that you explained. A multiplying number for default space between characters.

And if the default spacing is zero as you are saying, so the problem seems to be that.

My concern is: What will happens if I change "my" Hershey-Sans font to have this factor working fine and then send the drawing PRT to other person that don't have this Hershey-Sans customized?

ps.: thanks for additional information about the issue.

Gerson Fioravanti Junior
Mechanical Production Engineer

 

[BubbaK]

Well, on any given computer, NX is going to use the version of the Hershey font that it finds there. So, if two computers have different versions of the font (one "fixed" and one not), then NX text will look different on those two computers. You can easily test this with two computers inside your company.

I think the Hershey fonts are great, but you might be better off using standard Windows TrueType fonts. Every computer running Windows will have Arial, Cambria, Calibri, etc.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I think the Hershey fonts are great, but you might be better off using standard Windows TrueType fonts.

I agree 100%. While the Hershey fonts do look good they're really a bit of a relic from an era that's pretty much past.

Some of you may have been around long enough to remember when virtually all Drawings were produced using pen plotters. The issue was that ALL items on a Drawing had to produced using a finite-width pen, including text. Granted, it was possible to plot a Drawing using multiple pens (some plotters could have as many as six or even eight different pens available during the production of a Drawing) so you could conceivably use a wider pen for text but it would still not look like a filled-font, just a sort of smudgy text.

So to address this, Dr. Allen V. Hershey, at the Naval Weapons Laboratory, developed a set of 'fonts' that now carry his name. They were developed specifically for use with pen plotters and in 1967, when Dr. Hershey did this work, that's all that there was. First he created a font that gave the appearance of a 'filled-font' by using multiple curve segments for each 'stroke' of a letter. Also, since in those days the movement of the pens were dependent on the order in which the curve elements were created so a second goal was to create a font that could be plotted with the minimum amount of movement by the pen. This may not seem like a big deal today but anyone who has actually watched a pen plotter run will appreciate what I've saying. In fact, I can recall back in the early 80's when the Unigraphics (what NX was called when it was originally developed) development team spent a fair amount of time redoing most of the original UG fonts (first developed in the early to mid 70's) so as to optimize the pen movements when plotting strings of text, and it really helped at the time. Now it is true that later, pen-movment optimization codes were developed which addressed this from a general overall point of view that optimized the pen movements across the entire Drawing sheet but until then, plotting text was always something that needed special attention in order to minimize plot times as much as possible. And Dr. Hershey was very cognizant of that and that was one of the motivations to create the fonts that he did where the result gave the appearance of being filled yet was still efficient when plotted. Note there other attempts had been made to give the appearance of a filled or 'printed' font, including the use of hatching but they were very inefficient when plotted using a pen and the results were not all that good, so the Hershey fonts were recognized as the best approach at the time, all things were considered, which is why we added to the suite of UG/NX Fonts prior to the when NX started to support standard 'filled-fonts'.

That being said, with the advent of ink-jet and electrostatic printer/plotter technology, these efficiency issues were no longer relevant. And this then opened the way for having proper filled-fonts with the introduction of TrueType and OpenType technology, which are now supported by virtually all applications where strings of text needs to be rendered.

Anyway, sorry for the 'history lesson' but I think the story of Dr. Hershey and his work is interesting and it also goes back far enough that it reminds use that some of these issues are much older than we often realize.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[BubbaK]

Well, in fact, the Hershey fonts were first created for use on early 1960's graphical displays (which were really just big oscilloscopes). The history is outlined in a document that's part of the package at

https://community.plm.automation.si...hey-fonts-can-we-make-this-sticky/td-p/322996

Just for fun, the package also contains some additional Hershey fonts that are not shipped with NX.

 

[mag00]

Many thanks John / BubbaK.

Nice to know the history behind the font. That is a bit old. I'm impressed. My first computer was a PC-XT from 1986, and definitely it was not for CAD. AEIOhEIOAhEIOAHea.

I'll try to convince my bosses to change to a TTF.

Maybe I send them this thread link to have better chances on this.

Thanks all.

Gerson Fioravanti Junior
Mechanical Production Engineer

 

[Toost]

To my knowledge there is no way of knowing if a Unigraphics font is fixed/variable/overlap spacing. - John ?
The way I know it in this case is : In the directory : C:\siemens\nx9.0\UGII\ugfonts there are both the "UG fonts" in executable/ non-readable format. ( .fnx) AND a utility named "ugfontc.exe"
this utility can convert a executable font into a source format file, a .fnt which is readable using a text editor.

The start of this textfile will have information on the type of spacing used: ( From the manual
"Line 30-3,
This number indicates which width type was defined for the character font. A 1 indicates fixed width, a 2 indicates variable width and a 3 indicates overlap width."

see the documentation link in my previous post.

The font latin-extended is a extended ( more characters ) spin off from the font iso-font, which in turn didn't plot well. It's supposed to contain all the Latin characters.
The Iso-font and the Latin extended conforms visually very well to the Iso Standard. ( as the characters was expected to look when drawn by hand...)
Recently i had to read the standard on this quite thoroughly, and in fact the Iso standard more or less only states that the font used should be consistent and easy to read.

Regards,
Tomas

 

[JohnRBaker]

True, there is no easy way of determining whether an UG/NX font is fixed spacing or not. You have to either open the font definition file and look at the data record for each character, or else you need to create a representative string of text and examine the appearance of the characters relative to each other.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[JohnRBaker]

Well, in fact, the Hershey fonts were first created for use on early 1960's graphical displays (which were really just big oscilloscopes).

They were called DVST's, or 'Direct View Storage Tubes', and yes, they looked like "big oscilloscopes", green screens and all. But my comments about how pen plotters worked applied to these early display since when an an object was displayed on the screen it was as if it had been 'plotted' only instead of a pen, it was an electron beam which caused the green phosphor to glow and it would also cause the screen to be charged so that the phosphor would continue to glow until the power was removed. These were NOT raster displays so the electron beam did not scan across the screen like a TV set but rather 'drew' the image by drawing vectors. In fact, until they developed the pen-travel optimization code for plotters that I mentioned in my previous post, watching the electron beam move around screen as it refreshed an image you got a sort of preview as to how the pen would move if you were to plot the display on a pen-plotter.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[mag00]

The way I know it in this case is : In the directory : C:\siemens\nx9.0\UGII\ugfonts there are both the "UG fonts" in executable/ non-readable format. ( .fnx) AND a utility named "ugfontc.exe"

I tried this in my computer but it seems that I need a lib file that is missing on my computer. Where I can find the libsyss.dll? Don't it come with NX?

I read the information about how native fonts works from the link you shared and there are no information about this lib too.

*** edited ***

Ok, I've found it on my PC. It comes with NX, but the directory needs to be in the system path.

Gerson Fioravanti Junior
Mechanical Production Engineer

 

[Toost]

When i run one of NX's utilities, such as this Ugfontc.exe, or ug_convert_part.exe ( mm to inch or opposite) or... I always use the "NX command prompt".
Windows Start - All programs - Siemens NX9.0 - NX Tools - Command Prompt

That command prompt window has the necessary path set. ( If you have done a regular installation.)

Regards,
Tomas

 

[BubbaK]

> there is no easy way of determining whether an UG/NX font is fixed spacing or not.

Just open it in FontFactory. Look at the "Font Info" pane on the left. The fifth item down is "Width Type".