The text styles of the lettering font used in landscape CAD drawings can significantly influence the appearance of a completed design. Many designers bemoan the loss of their particular lettering style when moving from hand drafting to CAD drafting. While it is possible to convert your handwriting to a Windows font and use that font in your designs developed using gCADPlus, it is tedious. Many hand-lettered fonts are available to gCADPlus users. Here we discuss the various factors to consider when creating a characteristic and consistent lettering style for a design practice.
Text in gCADPlus can be drawn using either CAD or Windows fonts. Many CAD fonts in gCADPlus, shown below, give a ‘hand-lettered’ feel. Each lettering is defined by a named style and font of the same name. All fonts here have a height of 7 units, but note the considerable variation in height. CAD fonts are preferred in drawings because they are drawn with vectors – entities such as lines, arcs, etc. – and will display crisply no matter the zoom factor used. Text drawn with a CAD font can also be exploded into individual letters. That may have an advantage when creating logos. On the other hand, Windows text is drawn as bit-mapped (raster) text and may not print as crisply, especially when magnified. The advantage of using Windows fonts is that the range of fonts available is far greater than in gCADPlus, but we think we have given you plenty to choose from.
Hand-lettered text styles
Below are some examples of gCADPlus text styles drawn with CAD and Windows fonts.
Fonts used in lettering styles can greatly influence the appearance of a completed design. Here, we discuss the various factors to consider when creating a characteristic style for a design practice.