Text not WYSIWYG

[Revitator]

We're just evaluating Revit, and have hit a bump: We use a TTF font called 'Gill Sans MT', and in Revit it seems not to print WYSIWYG.

I'm attaching a couple of screenshots: 'Screen.jpg' and 'Print preview.jpg'. You can see (if you look closely) that the letters in the Gill Sans font are different between the two. In the Print Preview, they're bigger and squashed together.

You'll understand, we use this font all the time in other applications (Word, graphics, etc, etc.), and haven't noticed this anywhere else.

It's only a little thing, but it makes the drawings look lousy.

I'd appreciate any insight as to what might be going on here.

[hand471037]

I'd appreciate any insight as to what might be going on here.

What kind of printer is it?

IIRC, when you hit the 'preview' button, what you see is what's going to print, and it's based upon the driver you're using for the printer. Change the driver settings, and the preview will change, and the print job.

So are there any differences within the driver or settings between Word & Revit? Does Word preview the same way? Are you sending the fonts to the printer or not? Does it do the same thing when using Raster printing out of Revit?

[sbrown]

Print preview is not an accurate rep of what gets printed, have you printed and the actual print looks diff. from if you print in word to the same printer?

[Revitator]

Thanks for your replies, Jeffrey and Scott. I've done some more checking:

I've tested against an HP 5500 plotter, an Oce 9300 plotter, a Ricoh 3800 colour laser, and an Olivetti D-20 photocopier: The problem is the same on all of them. Prints & previews from Revit are not WYSIWYG (They're the same on all the printers, they just don't match the screen). Prints and previews from Word are OK.

I'm just using the same (Windows) printers (Start menu/Printers and Faxes) to print from Revit as I am from Word, etc. So you'd *think* that the driver settings would be the same. I'm not sure whether the fonts are sent to the printer in each case, but I suspect that they're all using different file formats to send the files to the printers (HPGL, PCL, Ricoh's own proprietary format, etc), which might imply that it's not a driver issue (would you agree?).

I've also checked the Raster vs Vector setting in Revit, and that doesn't seem to make any difference.

Hmm. I'm stumped again. Something to do with the way Revit picks up the font metrics from this particular font? (says he, clutching at straws)

Thanks again: Any further insights welcome!

[Allen Lacy]

This has been a known issue for some time. As I recall someone from support contacted me about this, but it seems that it's still an issue.

[sfaust]

We used a font called "graphite" which would print significantly smaller than the size given, but it previewed the same as it looked on the screen. When we exported to ACAD, it would jump up to the correct size, and therefore make everything too large. This font also worked fine in Word, etc. but would not work in notepad. We sent it off to support & they said that the font was slightly corrupt. We switched to a different one & have not had a problem since. Don't know if this is anything similar, but thought I'd mention it...

[Revitator]

Thanks, Allen and Steve. That's clarified my thinking.

It sounds as though the font we're using may be slightly corrupt (non-standard?), and Revit may be being more exacting than some other packages when it uses fonts.

I'll see if I can post a copy of the font up to support, and in the meantime figure a workaround.

[hand471037]

I'll see if I can post a copy of the font up to support, and in the meantime figure a workaround.

When I first got into Revit, I was working at a place that used a custom font for everything non-CAD (and the standard RomanS font there). I spent a fair amount of time starting to redo all the out of the box Revit families to use this other font. It was taking way too long, and in the end our 'custom' font that was choosen by a graphics firm was 99% the same as Arial, and the whole time our CAD had never matched the rest of the firm's documents (with no one caring), so we decided to just use the out-of-the-box Arial font.

And only two people out of 70 even noticed.

So... while the issue you're running into isn't great, and it should work the way you want, you might want to ask if you really need this or not before you spend a ton more time on it.

[Revitator]

Thanks again, Jeffrey

Yes, we could go to Arial for most of the text on the drawing. The only prob. is that our titleblock uses Gill Sans for the firm's name/logotype. My workarounds for this would be to either use a raster image (easy but not very nice), or to trace around the letterforms and make a series of filled regions (tricky but better). Unless you all have any other ideas?

[hand471037]

Yes, we could go to Arial for most of the text on the drawing. The only prob. is that our titleblock uses Gill Sans for the firm's name/logotype. My workarounds for this would be to either use a raster image (easy but not very nice), or to trace around the letterforms and make a series of filled regions (tricky but better). Unless you all have any other ideas?

If you've got a copy of Adobe Illustrator around, you can convert your Firm's logo into pure lines, and then export it as a DWG/DXF, and then import it into Revit for use as a Fill Region Sketch...

But this sometimes won't fly if the lines are too small, Revit will freak out unfortunately. But it's worth a try.