I think there is also something weird about the actual rendering of text. My library has an ascender(font,size=10) and descender(font,size=10) function to return the actual typographic ascenders from the OS/2 table of the font if you want more precision. The result is that if you want text to fit vertically into some area, you can't count on the size parameter doing the job, because the font might have longer or shorter ascenders than expected. Rather, as far as I can tell, when spacing letters (i.e., calculating x advances) it counts the font's em-size to be (approximately) 2048/1510 of the size parameter, regardless of the font. But OpenSCAD doesn't just take the ascender height from the TTF file as one would expect (say, from the OS/2 table). From the description, they say that the size parameter in text() gives the approximate ascender height. OpenSCAD's font sizing algorithm is weird. My library includes a drawText() module that does this (and some other things). For small text sizes, it's better to render text in a larger size and scale it down. OpenSCAD's text() module distorts font shapes when the text is small, perhaps due to hinting (which is not wanted for vector output). If anybody here knows more about the arcana of OpenSCAD's font system, please tell me. While trying to reverse engineer how OpenSCAD text() works, I came across some weirdnesses/bugs.
The library uses metrics data (including kerning) from the default Liberation fonts as well as from the Microsoft web fonts pack (Times New Roman, Arial, etc.). There is also a drawWrappedText() module for wrapping text. It probably only works for left-to-right fonts. The main function is measureText(text.) (with the same optional font, size and spacing arguments as the text() module) which returns the width of the text (or, more precisely, the total x-advance).
#Openscad 3d text full#
Be sure to read the instructions at for more options to control font size, spacing, and pre-generation of full strings of text.ĭerek Quenneville is a 3D printing evangelist who posts weekly on the Ponoko blog.I wrote a library to measure text width in OpenSCAD: The rendering process can be slow, so if you’re doing more than a few letters pipakin recommends generating your string as a separate model and merging it in later. Here’s hoeken‘s chunky bottle opener with text added: Now you can move and transform the text as you like, and personalize existing models as you see fit. All you have to do now is add “include ” to the OpenSCAD file you’re working on, then create each individual letter by calling FontHelveticaLight() like this: FontHelveticaLight(“A”) > python full_ddump.py -f HelveticaLight.ttf -o FontHelveticaLight.scad -m FontHelveticaLight.– In your terminal window, do this, changing HelveticaLight to whichever font you chose:.
#Openscad 3d text download#
– Pick a TrueType font already installed on your system, or download a public domain one from FontSpace and copy it to your Downloads folder.– full_ddump.py and font_base.scad from here.(In my experience, when compiling open source projects like FreeType under Windows, there can be… hiccups.
#Openscad 3d text mac os x#
These instructions will work in general for whichever platform you’re using, but specifically I’m using Mac OS X 10.6. It’s still under development (and requires a bit of compiling) so some users may not find this to be an easier solution, but it’s a must-have if you love using OpenSCAD. Lucky for me, there’s now a solution for generating 3D text in OpenSCAD: the OpenSCAD Font Importer 1.1 by pipakin.
I used Blender to add some lettering, but it was a pain because I’m not really used to working with the Blender UI. Last week I made some promotional glow-in-the-dark bottle openers (based on Starno‘s excellent bottle opener) for Site 3‘s anniversary party. Programmatically personalize objects with custom text
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