Maintain character size through out

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Hitch
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Maintain character size through out

Post by Hitch »

I've been working on a desk with Roman carvings for about 3 years now and it's coming to the end. I want to engrave a sentence around the perimeter of the desk (4' x 6'6") with some words or parts of words will be on drawer fronts and some on larger areas. The problem I'm having is trying to figure out how to keep the text width the same, height seems to be consistent. The characters are 1.5" tall and I'm using the Times Roman font. I'll post a picture of the desk, soon.
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gkas
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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by gkas »

Unless you use a monospaced font, the text width will not be the same. 'I' is not the same width as 'X'

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Adrian
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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Adrian »

Height isn't consistent in most fonts either (S,O are bigger than A,T for example because of an optical illusion caused by curves) but your text must be small enough that you don't notice it. To get each character at the same width you would need to use a font like Courier New, Consolas or Lucida Console (standard windows monospaced fonts).

If it's more a case that you have different sized words that you want to be closer in size to each then you could kern the letters (adjust the spacing) by using the Edit Text Spacing and Curve tool.

Hitch
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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Hitch »

Thanks for the tips. I should have been more specific. The same letters need to be the same width, no matter the size of the piece of wood. For example the letter C or E change.

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martin54
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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by martin54 »

Have you looked at Monospaced Fonts as gkas has already suggested :lol: :lol:

The other way is to convert to curves & them manually change the width BUT you need to be very careul doing this as you will alter the proportions of the letter which can make it look very wrong :lol: :lol: Shape stroke width & kerning will all change if this is done. Very small changes will generally not be that noticable a lot depends on the selected font & the degree it is altered :lol: :lol:
I am not personally a fan of stretching text in either direction, I would generally find a font that works for my needs :lol: :lol:

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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by tomgardiner »

Is it possible that you are using the "Draw Text in Box" option (T bounded by a square) instead of Draw Text (T icon)? Draw Text will maintain letter dimensions as long as you don't scale after creating.

Hitch
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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Hitch »

Mono space fonts is the way to go. Now to find one suitable for Latin.

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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Rcnewcomb »

Mono space fonts is the way to go. Now to find one suitable for Latin.
A list of monospaced fonts: ->Link

Verily Serif Mono might be good
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martin54
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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by martin54 »

Not one I have used myself but one that was mentioned to me some time ago for a signmaking job was Linux Libertine mono which can probably be found at the link Rcnewcomb gave :lol: :lol:

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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Hitch »

So I tried the monospace font and it made no difference. Here is the problem:

Wrapped around the entire sides and front of the desk is one sentence....similar to the Latin inscription around St. Peter's Basilica. The words will be inscribed on 5 panels that are 3 different sizes. On the panels there are words of varying length. The problem is that the size of the words (dimensions, not numbers of letters) automatically changes depending on how large (how many letters in the word) the word is. Basically, the program auto-fits the word onto the side of the panel, based on how many letters are in the word. The fewer the number of letters, the larger the physical size of the characters.

What I want to do is have the physical dimensions of the letters uniform throughout all panels, irrespective of whether the word is 3 letters or 10. To illustrate, on one panel we have "Andreas F R Et Ronald", and on the next panel, which is shorter, is "vs F C. Fec" I want every letter to be the same size, because it is supposed to be one sentence around the perimeter of the entire desk.

What is the best way to accomplish this? Should I simply carve out each letter individually and glue them on one by one, or is there a better way to accomplish this?

Thank you all,
H

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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by FixitMike »

"the program auto-fits the word" Exactly what are you doing when this happens? What tool are you using?
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Adrian
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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Adrian »

Which of the two text tools are you using? Sounds like you're using the text within a vector box one with the stretching options set. Use the standard text tool next to it and the size of the text (vertically) will always be what you specify. The horizontal size is obviously going to increase the more characters you have in the word.

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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Hitch »

In VCarve Pro, under "Drawing". Then, when I select either the "Draw Text" or "Draw Text within a Vector Box" tool, it does the same thing. I am trying to copy the screen to show you. Once I figure it out, I will post.

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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Hitch »

Adrian wrote:The horizontal size is obviously going to increase the more characters you have in the word.
This is precisely what I am trying to override...I want a uniform size of each letter, irrespective of the size of the word on the panel. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

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Adrian
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Re: Maintain character size through out

Post by Adrian »

The only way you're going to make a small word take up the same amount of space as a large word and keep the individual characters the same size is by adjusting the space between the characters. You can do that with the Edit Text Spacing and Curve tool.

I'm still confused though as you seem to be saying that the size of the characters is changing if you use the standard text tool? I've never seen that happen. The characters should stay at the size they are set to in the Text Height field regardless of the number of characters in the word.

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