[solved] text

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Emiel Bosch
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Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:12 pm

[solved] text

Post by Emiel Bosch » Sun Nov 27, 2022 6:38 pm

Hello Illustrators,

I would like to stretch a font both in length and in height.
I tried this with strech and with clip to rectangle but both don't work as I hoped, not even after exploding the text.
Does anyone have any tips to achieve this. The font is ttf.
Thank you very much.

Win-10Pro and Qcad-3.27.1.0
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Last edited by Emiel Bosch on Sun Jan 08, 2023 9:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Husky
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Re: Streching text

Post by Husky » Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:13 pm

Hi,
Emiel Bosch wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 6:38 pm
I would like to stretch a font both in length and in height.
Two options what comes to my mind ...
1. you can manipulate the text with help of the Property Editor (Text Hight and/or X scale),
or
2. manipulate with the "Align Reference Points" (AE) tool,

I would probably prefer the AE tool ... e_surprised
Work smart, not hard: QCad Pro
Win10/64, QcadPro, QcadCam version: Current.
If a thread is considered as "solved" please change the title of the first post to "[solved] Title..."

CVH
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Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:17 pm

Re: Streching text

Post by CVH » Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:54 am

Hi,

As text ... Husky's option 1: Match the height with Font Size, then the width with X Scale.
Exploded as line art ... Scale everything in height and width with a proper factor for each direction.
There is a difference between scaling as polylines or as line and arc segments.
Arc entities scale disproportional to ellipse arcs (=correct).
That isn't the case for arc segments of polylines and this may lead to deformation.

To have an idea about size:
- Font height is the size of the capital 'A'.
- Draw a bounding box around your text entity (See Misc > Draw).

I'll do it several ways and compare the outcome, depending the font that may differ.
AE doesn't scale disproportional, text have but 1 reference point.
As text there is no solution for character/word spacing or kerning, exploded it can be done manually.
XP to individual glyphs is an old feature request and distributing is that too. :(

For CNC you probably need polylines or line and arc segments.
Remark that exploding text, splines or ellipses is by Application Preferences.
TTF are splines, the finer you set the approximation tolerance, the more segments there are generated.
Similar with ellipse arcs but here the preference is related to a full ellipse.
Exploding ellipses is therefor not size related and may require different settings for different sizes.
Too fine, too coarse or exploding to line segments is not a good idea. :wink:

TTF is coded in quadratic splines, Qt exports cubic splines for some reason.
With some fonts there are less artifacts when setting the spline degree to 2.
After that I explode them further to polylines.

Regards,
CVH

Emiel Bosch
Junior Member
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:12 pm

Re: Streching text

Post by Emiel Bosch » Mon Nov 28, 2022 7:55 pm

Thank you, I will study the advice.
Have a nice evening.

With regards, Emiel.

CVH
Premier Member
Posts: 3418
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:17 pm

Re: Streching text

Post by CVH » Tue Nov 29, 2022 7:53 am

Emiel,
Disregard that scaling polylines disproportional may lead to arc deformation.

This was fixed in late 2019 ... And I still avoid to do that ... :lol:

Before, the bulge factor of an arc segment was left unchanged.
Scaling only start and end position made it another arc.

Newer art is to transform the arc ... Into an ellipse arc what is utterly correct. :P

But now the side-note:
Merging an ellipse arcs back into the polyline requires arc segments.
In other words exploding them and that is also by the Application Preference for XP.
Meaning that a 90 degree arc may turn into 16 arcs with 64 per full ellipse.
Doubling with each finer preference setting.
Project this on all the arcs from all the polylines from text and that may return a large number of arcs.

The advice doesn't change. :wink:
Scale text disproportional with X Scale, then explode the text what is by the absolute tolerance for splines.
Ensuring a minimal amount of arc segments for a controllable approximation.

Regards,
CVH

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