Autocad fonts

[mgookin]

I'm just about wrapping up 60+ hours of work in Autocad.
I see many of my fonts are in Calibri because they originated in Excel.
The fonts which originated in Autocad are Arial.
IIRC we always used Times New Roman on building sets.

I'll make the fonts whichever they need to be. That's simple.

Question:
What font is the industry standard for building design E sheets these days?

Thanks.

 

[gadfly56]

I'm just about wrapping up 60+ hours of work in Autocad.
I see many of my fonts are in Calibri because they originated in Excel.
The fonts which originated in Autocad are Arial.
IIRC we always used Times New Roman on building sets.

I'll make the fonts whichever they need to be. That's simple.

Question:
What font is the industry standard for building design E sheets these days?

Thanks.

Generally, it's cook's choice. Sometimes for large projects (we're working on the LaGuardia Terminal B replacement) the architect will specify title blocks, sheet numbering, fonts, etc. Personally I prefer a sans serif font like Arial but I've used Calibri. I wouldn't use Times New Roman as that's a serif font, and if you use half-sized prints on the job site it can make it a little difficult to read.

 

[mgookin]

Generally, it's cook's choice. Sometimes for large projects (we're working on the LaGuardia Terminal B replacement) the architect will specify title blocks, sheet numbering, fonts, etc. Personally I prefer a sans serif font like Arial but I've used Calibri. I wouldn't use Times New Roman as that's a serif font, and if you use half-sized prints on the job site it can make it a little difficult to read.

Thank you. Like you said we always got the fonts from upstream.
Arial it will be on this one.
Thanks.

 

[majorminotaur]

Arial is becoming pretty standard because that is default in Revit (and Revit actually makes it a pretty big pain in the ass to change). The last place I worked at there was a huge to-do about the width, the electrical department liked to use 0.85 width to fit more text on the drawings and architecture liked to use 1.0 width. At my new workplace we use swis 721 cn bt. I believe this is a free version of Helvetica. Most people love sans-serif but I find situations where serifs are helpful. Number of gangs for a switch is one, I use another font for that. It's really a company standard thing.

 

[GeorgeB]

I don't know any standards, but in a proportionally spaced font prefer (Microsoft) Tahoma or Verdana to Arial because I (eye) and 1 (one) are distinguishable. L (ell) is still just a vertical line. Both have zero and O enough different to keep me out of major trouble. If you are willing to use a fixed-pitch font, Microsoft Consolas is far and away my favorite for technical work and is my default in Word, Excel, and AutoCAD.

 

[zbang]

I'm with GeorgeB, but as long as you don't use Comic Sans or Stencil, you're probably OK.

 

[Smart $]

None of you guys must be AutoCAD diehards. Use to be all you had to choose from was SHX fonts. Simplex was most common IIRC.
http://www.g-wlearning.com/CAD/9781605251615/student/resourceCenter/PDF/Fonts.pdf

 

[gadfly56]

None of you guys must be AutoCAD diehards. Use to be all you had to choose from was SHX fonts. Simplex was most common IIRC.
http://www.g-wlearning.com/CAD/9781605251615/student/resourceCenter/PDF/Fonts.pdf

OK gandpa, let me change the channel for you...

I should talk. I go back to AutoCAD 11

 

[Smart $]

OK gandpa, let me change the channel for you...

I should talk. I go back to AutoCAD 11

I forget exactly what version I last used professionally. I think perhaps 4 or 5.

 

[Strathead]

None of you guys must be AutoCAD diehards. Use to be all you had to choose from was SHX fonts. Simplex was most common IIRC.
http://www.g-wlearning.com/CAD/9781605251615/student/resourceCenter/PDF/Fonts.pdf

As a real novice to CAD, I like the SHX fonts because they scale best in CAD's vector based format. I find them easy to read on a plan page and on a PDF zoomed out. Arial tends to get too thick when zoomed out.

 

[GeorgeB]

OK gandpa, let me change the channel for you...

I should talk. I go back to AutoCAD 11

Let's not go there. I used 1.4 when an 8086 coprocessor board was required on 8080/Z80 CP/M systems, then 2.0 and 2.1 with MS-DOS.

Yes, there are advantages to compiled shape (.shx) but modern typefaces bring a lot to the party. Those of you who've been around a while remember that we could create our own shape files and compile them into .shx.

 

[gadfly56]

Let's not go there. I used 1.4 when an 8086 coprocessor board was required on 8080/Z80 CP/M systems, then 2.0 and 2.1 with MS-DOS.

Yes, there are advantages to compiled shape (.shx) but modern typefaces bring a lot to the party. Those of you who've been around a while remember that we could create our own shape files and compile them into .shx.

That might have made sense in the 90's when there was limited or nothing available, but once AutoCAD moved to Windows you could use TrueType fonts and there really wasn't any point after that. I suppose also if you want your corporate logo to be more than a pasted-on JPG or BMP it would make sense, but not much beyond that.

 

[Smart $]

...but once AutoCAD moved to Windows you could use TrueType fonts and there really wasn't any point after that. ...

Not sure what your point is there. Even after true type fonts were available, shape fonts were preferred on professional CAD drawings... at least they were in my world at the time.

FWIW, a few ttf versions of some common shx fonts are available for free download. For example, http://www.fontpalace.com/font-details/Simplex/

 

[SceneryDriver]

I use Arial in my CAD drawings. I've recently done a bunch of touchscreen programming for some projects, and I always select Arial Bold over the HMI's default font. MUCH easier to read, and so the operators are happy. Happy operators treat the equipment better.



SceneryDriver

 

[ggunn]

I feel your pain.

In my company there is a lot of legacy AutoCAD stuff that was put together by someone who is no longer with the company. The font that he used exclusively is Shruti TT. When I upgraded from Windows 8 to 10, Shruti went away and the font that AutoCAD substituted resulted in text that overflowed nearly every text box in all the files and templates. Ouch.

System fonts in Windows are not easily located, but we found them on a coworker's W8 computer; we found Shruti and moved a copy onto my machine and installed it. It was a bit of a pain but not nearly so much as would have been changing all those textboxes to another font.

 

[Smart $]

Man, I can't believe you guys go with something like Arial in drawings (HMI I can understand). I realize it's user's choice, but why not use a font closer to traditional drawing... like City Blueprint or Architect...???...!!!!

 

[gadfly56]

Man, I can't believe you guys go with something like Arial in drawings (HMI I can understand). I realize it's user's choice, but why not use a font closer to traditional drawing... like City Blueprint or Architect...???...!!!!

I understand your aesthetic concerns. In my experience, if you are using 1/2 size prints in the field both of those fonts make your eyes hurt after a while. Arial, not so much. YMMV.

 

[dkidd]

Man, I can't believe you guys go with something like Arial in drawings (HMI I can understand). I realize it's user's choice, but why not use a font closer to traditional drawing... like City Blueprint or Architect...???...!!!!

Or Hand

 

[Smart $]

I understand your aesthetic concerns. In my experience, if you are using 1/2 size prints in the field both of those fonts make your eyes hurt after a while. Arial, not so much. YMMV.

On regular size prints Arial looks fat on a drawing. I agree if you're using half-sized prints skinny CAD-type type is hard on the eyes.... because CAD drawings are made to view at a specific size. In fact, that's the whole point behind scaled drawings. If you print a scale drawing at half size, you are not viewing it how it was intended to be viewed. If you want to carry around half-sized prints, you should also carry around a magnifying glass.

 

[gadfly56]

On regular size prints Arial looks fat on a drawing. I agree if you're using half-sized prints skinny CAD-type type is hard on the eyes.... because CAD drawings are made to view at a specific size. In fact, that's the whole point behind scaled drawings. If you print a scale drawing at half size, you are not viewing it how it was intended to be viewed. If you want to carry around half-sized prints, you should also carry around a magnifying glass.

All I can say is that it seems to be general practice if you're doing field surveys, for example, to use 1/2 size prints, or basically whatever fits on 11 x 17. Lugging around full size prints for a PATH project (34 x 56) is just an exercise in comedy.