Importing Letter Fonts

[NXJockey]

Does anyone know if it is possible (is so how) to import fonts into NX for use in drawing annotation.

I am perticularly interested in extracting the text from a Word document which contains special charachters and pasting straight into the annotation editor.

Cheers,

NXj

 

[Xwheelguy]

At the moment, I do not believe NX uses TrueType fonts directly, so there isn't a way to just copy/paste like you can from Word to Excel. NX uses actual line stroke characters for the fonts used with dimensions, leaders, etc.

With all of that said, I believe there is a little utility floating around the NX boards that will convert a TTF into vector format so that it can be used as a stroked font in NX. The utility is called Font Factory and that should convert the font you see in Word into an NX font that can be used for dimensioning and annotating.

Maybe John Baker (from Siemens) will read this post and post the utility for you, if a search on this board doesn't find it for you first.

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

Some people are like slinkies....they don't really have a purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

 

[SiW979]

I remember being told that Siemens do not do anything with fonts for NX and any development in font land is down to the users like you and I because I was after getting hold of some that could be laser cut.

Best regards

Simon NX4.0.4.2 MP10 - TCEng 9.1.3.6.c - (NX6.0.3.6 MP2 native)

http://www.jcb.com

Life shouldn't be measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of times when it's taken away...

 

[JohnRBaker]

Attached is a zip file containing the latest version of FontFactory, a utility which will allow you to edit NX Drafting fonts, as well as convert TTF into an NX Drafting font.

As for the comment about NOT being in the 'font business', this was in reference to our current support for TTF with the 'Text as Curves' function and for any future support that we may have for TTF in NX Drafting. The idea is that we will use the TTF library that you have installed on your system and if you are in need of additional fonts, you will need to acquire them yourself from the normal sources one would go to for TTF for use with such applications as Word. And in some cases you may be required to purchase these font libraries as they may be copyrighted, such as is the case with the TTF version of Helvetica.

As for when are we going to be supporting TTF as part of Drawing creation, it's being worked on as we speak, but we can not yet make a prediction as to when it will actually be available in NX.

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.

 

[NXJockey]

Cheers John,

NXj

 

[Samson81]

What about going to other way? I understand there are tons of TTF fonts out there but I would like to convert some of the FNX NX fonts to TTF so I can use them in NX Design. Is that possible?

 

[JohnRBaker]

See my last post in this thread where I uploaded the latest version of FontFactory, a 'freeware' utility which was originally developed to make it easier to convert TrueType Fonts into NX Fonts. However, if you download the utility you will find in the included documentation an outline of a procedure to go the other way, converting NX Fonts in TrueType fonts. Now this is NOT a one-step process which can be accomplished using only FontFactory, but FontFactory is the first step in the workflow which is described in the documentation.

Now that being said, if you don't actually need the NX Text to still be editable as text, but rather just as curves suitable for some sort of modeling task, you could also do the following:

Enter the desired text into the NX Drafting Annotation editor and create a Note object. Now go to...

File -> Export -> CGM...

...and export the text string into a CGM file.

Now go to your modeling session and perform a...

File -> Import -> CGM...

...which will add the 'text' as a series of line elements.

Now there will be no practical way of editing the 'text' once it has been imported in, but at least it's a rather simple and quick method for getting text converted to curves, if that is all that you need.

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.

 

[Samson81]

Thanks John I will give it a try.

 

[vriyg]

Any possibility that NX 7.5 offers ttf font in drafting?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Not yet, but we're working on it.

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.