Need Smaller, Good Looking Fonts

ashscott · 11 Apr 2014, 21:26

I am beginning to do some quite complicated plans with Layout but am struggling to get a nice looking font that will go small enough. Arial looks nice but even right down at 8points it is not small enough for what I need.

I know there are some other fonts that go smaller but they look awful - does anyone know of a workaround for this or a nice looking font that will go a lot smaller than Arial 8?

Rich O Brien · 11 Apr 2014, 21:31

For print or presentation?

Richard · 11 Apr 2014, 23:16

Mate any font can go as small as you want! The problem is if reading the PDF you are limited by screen res!!

Printers always recommend not fonts smaller that 6pt.

ashscott · 11 Apr 2014, 23:30

@unknownuser said:

Mate any font can go as small as you want!

Whoa, until you said that I didn't realize that I can just change the font size manually rather than the drop down arrow - excuse my ignorance.

I'm gonna go with 6pt as 8pt seems to be coming out fine in the printer - its just too big for the drawing itself.

The assumption has obviously been made that no-one needs smaller than 8pt so the drop down menu only goes that far but you can just type in '6pt' to force it - shocked that I didn't realize this before

Dave R · 12 Apr 2014, 02:22

I think the drop down list for font size stopping at 8 pt. is not unusual.

I regularly use 6 pt. for dimensions and other text on all of the plans I produce to print on letter size paper. I set up my template for that.

ashscott · 12 Apr 2014, 04:31

Dave, you have 6pt showing up on your drop down menu or just the default size when you open the doc?

Dave R · 12 Apr 2014, 11:00

Just the default size for that specific template.

Richard · 15 Apr 2014, 00:32

You can add the smaller / bigger buttons to your toolbar! That's how I change font size usually!

gullfo · 23 Apr 2014, 13:27

just key in the size number and you can get the size you want. some apps (i haven't tried in LayOut) let you use 6.5pt etc if you needed it. also, not all fonts scale when not "standard" sizes (4,6,8,10,11,12,etc) so 5pt 7pt etc might not appear correct with some fonts.

mwm5053 · 23 Apr 2014, 14:03

If you're running out of room on your plans and get to busy with dim. doors and windows room sizes and room names why not use schedules for some of that making repetition and busyness with in the drawing better to look at. Scrapbooks are perfect for this and you can do schedule tables in LO and save them as scrapbooks.

caronte01 · 28 May 2014, 02:43

Also, bounding box margins for text objects does not scale proportionally with font size. Small text boxes have a proportionally bigger size, compared to a bigger text box. Esp. Evident with text with background color/outline.

I try not to use text smaller than 8 pt, for that reason. It would be nice if that was fixed though...