TTF vs .shx

[jaberwok]

I think Adesk see their future as being bound to Micros**t's.
I suppose, also, that it makes sense to left the OS do as much work as possible. From that, it follows that SHX fonts will eventually be dropped completely. Bear in mind that SHX was designed to work with PEN plotters - when was the last time you saw one of them?

Personally, I still use RomanS but I anticipate that the time will come when that is no longer practical.

[bbeck]

Our office is making the move to "TTF" because of our decision to adopt Revit as our production software. I'm now changing some of our load LiSP routines to use "TTF" within AutoCAD to remain consistent. This marks the end of "SHX" for our office.

Brian Beck
CAD Manager
Rainforth Grau Architects

[Jordan Truesdell]

J.T.: First of all, your comment about architects sounds like it comes from an engineer or perhaps a senior experienced cad drafter. To paraphrase a Pink Floyd song: "...We don't need no REGISTRATION...." I get paid for pretty AND I INSIST they build it the way I draw it.

You comments about TTF vs. SHX are appreciated. The issue of missing fonts in drawing exchange is easily solved if one simply sends fonts along with the drawings. It's done all the time and has nothing to do with Autocad "native" fonts (except if you use one, opening it on another computer makes text display predictable.).<snip>

Engineer (didn't want to keep you in suspense). And I didn't mean the "pretty" part to be denigrating, though it may have come across that way - Architecture should be pretty. Along with the creativity comes a need to be individual - hence the proliferation of hand-lettered fonts. I guess my view is that your right to be pretty ends where interoperability and readability (and therefore, public safety) begins.

I do a lot of work involving older buildings. Some of the modern buildings will come with CAD files (another thread), and I have gotten some that specified a diagonal strut made of TS8x8x%. Well, there's a pretty big range of strengths that could result from a wall thickness of %, and the only way for me to find out what is in the field is to drive to the facility and dril a hole in the member big enough that I can get a set of calipers in there, then try and have the hole repaired. Drilling a hole wil result in a stress concentration - up to a 3.0 factor in stress increase - which could result in the member failing under its design load. That's potentially a couple thousand dollars worth of work because a font didn't get transmitted.

The key here is that fonts aren't embedded in the CAD file, so they can get lost. I'm not really keen on keeping tabs on everyone elses fonts, and having to make sure they're transferred to every system that needs them. More importantly, we as designers can't guarantee that digital files we send will be kept together and transferred to the next professional. While that may not be a big deal for the architectural representation, it is a big deal for the structural drawings.

A question that I have for those of you working with TTF: are you using the fonts which come with a vanilla install of windows (arial, courier, times new roman), or are you using custom or third party (bitstream) fonts?

Brian - what is it about Revit that made you move to TTF, or is it just a convenient changeover point?

[teiarch]

Jordan: Thanks for the reply. Apparently something didn't get transmitted to me because the reference to the TS member said "TS8x8x%". Maybe the problem of communication isn't confined to Autocad?

BTW: I assumed maybe engineer and refrained from using my standard engineer joke which goes:

"How do you scare and engineer?"

"Begin any question with the phrase: "What if....?"

IMO, "pretty" is not a good term for architectural drawings and it doesn't apply to mine which I consider "practical". Frankly, I am suspect of "pretty" drawings myself. The only way to cure this is to require the author of "pretty" drawings to build something from them and we all know THAT'S not going to happen!

The question of custom fonts will NOT go away. My continuing point is that Autodesk makes little if any effort to upgrade their shx fonts even though I've tried to offer my expanded versions. If they're intending to drop SHX fonts altogether in the future, why don't they just say it NOW? (It's a future "upgrade" selling point???)

Unless someone comes up with a new format that's less resource intensive, TTF fonts will present their own set of problems.

[Jordan Truesdell]

Jordan: Thanks for the reply. Apparently something didn't get transmitted to me because the reference to the TS member said "TS8x8x%". Maybe the problem of communication isn't confined to Autocad?

That's exactly the point. It should have been listed as TS8x8x1/4 or TS8x8x3/8, but instead of a thickness, I got a % sign because somebody used a font that wasn't standard, and the font files had been lost by the facility. I started with a custom font, too. Data entry was snazzy - just use %%2XX for a fraction character, where the XX was a number from 1 to 15, representing the number of sixteenths of an inch. So %%204 showed up in DText as 1/4 (stacked, of course). I realize the danger of this when I sent a DWG file to a client (architect) and on the final plotted drawings, there was a ?"x4" expasion anchor on the drawings. I sent the font file, but they forgot to put it into the fonts directory, so the 1/2" anchor that was necessary was now up for interpretation. That got corrected, but its a simple item which could have easily not gotten caught before the drawings went out into the field.

It took a bit of work and personal re-training to use mtext objects and the autostack function, but it's one less thing to worry about. I have zero professional liability claims for my company, yet my E&O insurance premiums are in excess of 12% of my gross revenue. Uncle Sam is the only out of house "vendor" who gets more of my revenue stream. I don't need my E&O to be an issue.

BTW - I liked the engineer joke. There's nothing you can throw at me that I can't support, as long as I can use my US Skyhook catalog to solve the problem. Their current line of unobtanium alloy beam stiffeners are a real project saver.

[bbeck]

Brian - what is it about Revit that made you move to TTF, or is it just a convenient changeover point?

TTF is the native text format for Revit. In fact, this is no other option within Revit at this time.

Brian Beck
CAD Manager
Rainforth Grau Architects

[aaronrumple]

I have some WordPerfect Laser Font cartridges... Want those? How about some AutoCAD DOS drivers for your plotter?

Technology changes. Move on.

[bbeck]

I have some WordPerfect Laser Font cartridges...

HAH! man the good ol' days of font cartridges, what a nightmare that was from a network perspective.

Brian Beck
CAD Manager
Rainforth Grau Architects

[teiarch]

Aaron: Pretty snippy for someone from the midwest; must be a transplant.... The time will come when someone applies that comment as an excuse to lay you off. Then it won't be so germain. Technology (or lack of it) is what fuels the consumer computer market and keeps the software vendors hopping. It also contributes to the problem of what to do with "old" computers no one wants any more. Vance Packard predicted this year ago: it's called planned obsolesence.

Jordan T. Glad you liked the joke. My wife is a "glass half full" type; I'm the opposite. Best line I've seen lately is: "Some people will say the glass is half full; others will say it's half empty. An engineer would say that the container is twice as big as it needs to be.!"

Getting back to Mtext....my theory about Mtext is that it was created out of necessity because of the chaos of character locations before the advent of UNICODE. Before Autodesk decided to adopt UNICODE/UNIFONT text formatting, everyone who created a font sorta stuck characters where they felt it would be convenient. There were no standards until UNICODE started organizing things. Actually, Romans has had 1/4 and 1/2 fraction symbols for some time (like 1993) but no one bothered explaining where they were or how to use them.

Mtext in version 06 is catching up on UNICODE character locations with their symbols insertion feature. The fact that you use the autostack feature in Mtext is semi-foolproof but the some one will complain (as they already have) that stacked fractions aren't the way THEY would like to have them. Point is that no matter what is done, someone ain't gonna like it. Myself, I seldom if ever use Mtext because my lack of skill with it makes it cumbersome and unpredictable (for me) to use. (Readers need not respond this comment; I've read most of the rationale. It's my perogative NOT to like Mtext!).

The ROMANS7 font, a revision of Autocad's Romans font that I've expanded on, is a good example of what could be done if Autodesk would simply make it their native font but they choose not to for reasons unknown. Download and try it or Simplex61 from CADDEPOT.COM. Both are better, more efficiently coded fonts than the ones Autodesk sends out.

Cheers.......

[aaronrumple]

Aaron: Pretty snippy for someone from the midwest; must be a transplant.... The time will come when someone applies that comment as an excuse to lay you off.

Gee - at least one person can catch a joke.

Now on the technical side of AutoCAD, I've done benchmarks of Mtext and SHX for several versions of AutoCAD now. Regen times for each were virtually identical in 2004. (I use large blocks of text from books on Project Gutenberg to get appropriate randomized words..) AutoCAD simplex shx takes twice as long to regen in 2007 as the same text composed in a courier or arial TTF.

I have no doubt that Autodesk could expend resources optimizing and developing SHX. But why? They aren't the one's that made SHX obsolete. We - the market - did. We demanded to be able to use the same font in our drawings as we used in our word processor. We wanted to be able to scale fonts when printing at any size without loss of resolution. Autodesk didn't come up with a better SHX - so they had to adopt someone else's technology.

There are plenty of true CAD issues for Autodesk to spend our license fees on. I wish they would dump some of the older technology in AutoCAD. They wouldn't then have to spend development time and resources which could be spent in other areas.


...and yes, all the time I spent working in Word Perfect, I kept thinking, "There has to be a better way to do this font thing...."