Text on a Curve Spacing Issues

[martin54]

Lots of good advice & things for you to work on WaltS, one option is not to do any work for people who's names have letters that are difficult to make look right
Something else worth considering is your choice of font if you want it running along a curve. Some fonts work far better than others, generally speaking the condensed version of a lot of fonts work reasonably well because the letters are much narrower to start with so the gaps in certain kerned pairs doesn't look any where near as bad

[mezalick]

Here’s a tip from my teacher, an old time sign painters who worked brilliantly with fonts.
Turn the design upside down and look at the spacing.

The reason kerning is so easy to miss is because your eyes tend to ignore the spacing in pursuit of reading the word or sentence.
After decades of reading, adults don’t see letters anymore, we see words.


This is a topic we will be addressing at the CNC Seminars Event in Philadelphia.
January 26 – 28, 2017
http://cncseminars.com/events/philadelphia-pa/


Michael

[cac67]

Walt,
Is this somewhat like what you had in mind. I simply convert the text to curves and then use the arrow keys to move in the x and y axis. Then for the particular letter go into node edit mode. the blue dot on the outside corner allows you to rotate the text. A bit tedious but it works.

Wait, what? The blue dot in node edit mode lets you rotate? I'm missing something.

Yes the blue dot on the outside of all 4 corners lets you rotate the selected vector which is the letter in your case. After you get them all to your liking group them and toolpath them.

The way I handle this is to find the center point of the circle the arc is describing and set that as the rotation point for the little blue dot, that way the letters just slide along the curve when you grab it.

[scottp55]

Nice tip Michael!
Thanks:)
scott

[highpockets]

Walt,

Is this what you are trying to do or am I missing something?

[martin54]

Haha, I read that the same way I would have done normally Michael, must have weeded far to much vinyl text

[WaltS]

Lots of good advice & things for you to work on WaltS, one option is not to do any work for people who's names have letters that are difficult to make look right
Something else worth considering is your choice of font if you want it running along a curve. Some fonts work far better than others, generally speaking the condensed version of a lot of fonts work reasonably well because the letters are much narrower to start with so the gaps in certain kerned pairs doesn't look any where near as bad

Lol, I like that way of thinking, Martin.
I would have tried another font but I was having to match it to a font that already existed.

Michael - thanks for that. I've seen that trick before and yes, it's very true we see words and not letters mostly anymore. I've been doing graphics work for many years and I'm pretty picky about this sort of stuff, where a lot of people would either overlook it or ignore it.

Highpockets - Yes, but, you see where there's more space between the J, O and R than the D, A and N? And the N is lower than the J.

[WaltS]

Walt,
Is this somewhat like what you had in mind. I simply convert the text to curves and then use the arrow keys to move in the x and y axis. Then for the particular letter go into node edit mode. the blue dot on the outside corner allows you to rotate the text. A bit tedious but it works.

Yes the blue dot on the outside of all 4 corners lets you rotate the selected vector which is the letter in your case. After you get them all to your liking group them and toolpath them.

The way I handle this is to find the center point of the circle the arc is describing and set that as the rotation point for the little blue dot, that way the letters just slide along the curve when you grab it.

I'm not exactly following this, but it sounds interesting. Can you post a screen shot maybe of how you do this? Or explain if you're good with words?

[mezalick]

Walt,
Here's a screen shot..
With this the letter will follow the arc...

Michael

[mezalick]

Another shout.
You'll just need to grab the corner handle to rotate it along the curve

~M

[WaltS]

Walt,
Here's a screen shot..
With this the letter will follow the arc...

Michael

Thanks, I get most of it but how do you get the reference point in the center?

[WaltS]

Never mind, I just figured it out. That's awesome. Thank you!

[WaltS]

One more question, converting text into curves, does that have any effect on V caring the text? I know text is treated differently than other vectors, at least I read that somewhere.

[COWBOY1296]

I remember seeing a tutorial on this one but forgot it so i had to teach myself all over how to do it. Add your name or word to a curve and then Convert your letters of that word to curves and then If you double click on a single letter you will end up with points and handles all around the letter. Double click on the center point and hold your left mouse key and drag it to the center of your circle or any other place you might want it. Then clicking on the corner point you can drag your letter along the arc or circle. Now after doing this to the to several letters in a name i saw that my name was no longer perfectly centered. So i grouped the individual letter, clicked on the name again creating points and handles. I then drug the center point to the center of the circle, drug the corner handle and it rotated the entire name until i was happy. Now Michael has forgotten more about aspire then i hope to ever learn, so i am sure that he could have given you a better explanation.

[COWBOY1296]

As far as v-carving the letters once they have moved grouped or ungrouped has no effect on the cutting. If you highlight the vectors and then create your tool path it will cut just as good as if you had not done anything. But your preview is a tell all. If the preview looks good then so will your carving.