Display uppercase letters even when input is lower case

[Cadillacman]

Is there a font in NX that will display uppercase letters no matter whether the user inputs lower or upper case? All of our NX inputs use caps (file name, drafting inputs, etc) but for e-mails and such, remembering to turn on/off caps is a pain.
A thread from 09Nov12 addressed this, but when I open the .fnx file in notepad it's jibberish. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[looslib]

A .fnx file is a compiled font file and would be gibberish.

Take the file and run it through the NX font converter program to see the readable source.
Or just install the .fnx file, make it your default and try it. ☺


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[mmauldin]

There is an all caps font in this thread:

http://eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=333472

 

[mmauldin]

Forgot the directions. Save the file to your ugfonts directory, restart NX and the font should be available. You can rename it the blockfont.fnx if you want to make it retroactive to all files that default to the blockfont font. You probably should rename blockfont.fnx to blockfont.old as a backup.

 

[mmauldin]

Example:

 

[Cadillacman]

Worked! Thank you both SOOOOO much!

 

[Cadillacman]

mmauldin, can you create a caps file for ideas_iso also, PLEASE? Our company switched over to that font as it's default.

 

[looslib]

Anyone can do it.
Copy the existing ideas_iso.fnx file so you have a copy.
Take the ideas_iso.fnx file and run it through the converter to make a ideas_iso.fnt file.
Open the ideas_iso.fnt in a text editor and chaneg all the letter definitions so upper and lower are all upper line strokes.
Cloase and save the file.
Convert it back to ideas_iso.fnx.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[mmauldin]

Normally I would create the font for you. As it turns out, the ug font converter fails to rum on my workstation due to a missing dll error. I have asked the IT guys to fix the problem. When they get around to fixing it, if you still need it I'll create the font. But, as Ben pointed out, it's really not hard to do, just a bunch of copy and paste.

 

[Cadillacman]

Thanks to both Looslib & Mmauldin, for taking the time to reply. I'm not familiar with the converter at all. After a little Google search, I've located the ugfontc.exe file and when I execute, theres a flash of a DOS screen and then it's gone. That's as far as I can go with my very limited experience.
Anything else I can do? I'd rather learn it then have to lean of someone else to take time from their day.

 

[looslib]

open a command window
navigate to the folder with ugfontc.exe
run ugfontc.exe from the command window
it should list an error code/reason
if not, try running ugfontc.exe -help and see if there is some help inormation in the program



"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[Cadillacman]

Since I'm a user, your patience is appreciated. I've converted the ideas_iso & the blockfont (sent earlier) to .fnt by using ugfontc -u to compare side by side. Was the -u option correct?

Listed under each of the CHAR 'x' are LM, #, #, and LD, #, #, and I'm not seeing a correlation to distinguish uppercase/lowercase. Can I copy the for each of the CHAR, 'x' LD numbers from the sent blockfont file into the same CHAR, 'x' in the ideas_iso file?

Rob Lawrence

 

[Toost]

LM means " move pen without paper contact to font-coordinate X , Y" ( in the fonts local units, which is something , lets say "similar", to " a percentage of the character height". Then LD means Line Draw, move with pen in contact with paper to font-coordinate X , Y ( from the previous coordinate)

The fonts only have X and Y, no Z value.
Each individual character starts by : move to X,Y, then Draw line to X,Y, Draw line to X,Y , draw line to X,Y etc etc.
and yes you can copy from character to character, similar to:
CHAR, 'A',
**************** ( copy this section)
CHAR, 'a',
---------------- ( paste here)
CHAR, 'B', etc etc


Regards,
Tomas

 

[looslib]

The CHAR line tells what character is defined by the following LM and LD commands.

Copy the LM/LD lines from the CHAR 'A' definition to the CHAR 'a' definition overwriting what is already there and repeat for the full alphabet.



"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[JohnRBaker]

As you can probably discern from looking at the content of an NX font file, the layout of the letters date-back to the era of pen plotters. Since with any drawing at that time, the vast majority of the 'lines' being plotted were the ones which made-up the characters of the notes and dimensions, great pain was taken to design each letter such that there were a minimum number of 'pen-up' & 'pen-down' operations. In other words, the sequence of the X,Y coordinates were designed so as to draw as many of the lines that made-up a letter using a SINGLE 'pen-down -> move point-to-point-to-point -> pen-up' cycle as was possible. This, along with software which optimized the pen motions relative to the entire drawing, were key to providing not only reasonable plot times, but also to minimize the wear and tear on the pen plotters themselves, which during the early days of CAD were often the single most expensive piece of hardware needed when installing a CAD system, often exceeding even the cost of the mainframe CPU. Large flatbed plotters could cost well over $100,000 (and this was in 1970 and 1980 dollars) and even smaller belt and drum plotters could go for $50K or more, and since they were complex highspeed mechanical devices, there was always the potential of expensive maintenance and repair costs.

A typical Xynetics Flatbed Plotter:

A less-expensive belt-plotter from Calcomp (this is the type we had when I first started using CAD):

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Toost]

I don't know if you asked this or not...
"Can I copy the for each of the CHAR, 'x' LD numbers from the sent blockfont file into the same CHAR, 'x' in the ideas_iso file?"
Both yes and no, IF you can, you will get a visually identical letter in both fonts.
IF you cannot, ( John can probably clarify this if needed) Each font has/can have its own "units"/ "grid" which might mean that the coordinates ( the LM/LD ) might be to low or too high.

And, thanks John for the extra illumination on the subject

Btw, I have met a few former I-deas users who had selected the Ideas_Iso as their default, and the reason was the name of the font,..
If you are Europeean, - Have you tried the latin-extended font ? It's more similar to the Iso standard.

Regards,
Tomas

 

[Cadillacman]

Thanks to everyone, I was able to muddle my way through this and I now have the ideas_iso file I need. Thanks again!

 

[mmauldin]

I just got my ugfontc to run, glad I checked in before doing all that work.

Cadillacman, would you mind posting the file in case others want to use it?

 

[Cadillacman]

Here's the ideas_iso.fnx file

Any ideas why when creating files in NX or TC the File ID and Name saves as uppercase, but the Description stays lowercase? The Description must pull from a different file other than blontfont.fnx but where and which one?

 

[looslib]

My guess is that TC fonts are TrueType or some other Windows standard font and have nothing to do with any *.fnx file from NX. In some cases programers make some file names all upper or lower case when creating the file or your system has a UPPER_CASE setting that forces file names to upper case.

Don't get Windows/TC UI display or even NX UI fonts confused with NX drafting fonts that use the proprietary *.fnx files. They are separate and the *.fnx files are internal to the drafting module of NX only. Even the fonts used for things like sketcher dimensions are using system level fonts and not the *.fnx files.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli