FONT- Need a quick favor (from windows user)

jeff hammond

bummer.. looks like i have a bigger problem than just the font i choose..

maybe it's because i'm doing this on a high rez screen? (15" laptop @ 1680x1050)..

more tests are in order but i was hoping this would be a simple fix

thanks for the help rich

jeff hammond

ugh..

this problem is going to start being more prevalent soon..
apple is rumored to come out with a 15" 2880x1800 very soon..
the display i have now will be middle of the road in a couple of years..
people will still have today's standard resolutions..
the text is being displayed as if it's a web browser (or something) with no regard to what's going on in the viewport..

[EDIT] oh wait.. one more test please
this one has the font size set via 'height' instead of 'points' (5" in this case).. i wonder if that will get things under control?

screenshot please

fontQ_Arial_5in.skp

thanks

mac1

Your 5in change
Jeff FYI
12 pts

The pic is using TT font DejaVu Sans bold 12 pt.
24 pt ~ 32 px, 12 pt ~16 px
I 'm running 1680x1050 96 dpi
Your 5" about the same as your orginal post except not bold

jeff hammond

ok. thanks

so apparently, setting font size by 'height' will consider the sketchup viewport so using that setting instead should give a consistency across different monitors..

in contrast, your 12pt example more_or_less matches the one i posted at 24pt (which explains why many .skps i open with text has such tiny text.. i'm always wondering why people are using such small text in their .skps .. now i know)..

thanks again for the help

mac1

Roger
I will continue to look at this time permitting. We have the same monitor res. set but get different results which I don't understand

mac1

FYI
Your Helvetica Neue font is not one available either in the SU model info nor in my fonts showing in my control panel fonts. Guess is SU is using some type of default but what?? However when I change to fonts available in SU the same problem shows ( at 24 points) unless of course I change the size also??

jeff hammond

@mac1 said:

Roger
I will continue to look at this time permitting. We have the same monitor res. set but get different results which I don't understand

we have the same amount of pixels but my overall screen size is smaller than yours (the individual pixels are smaller on my laptop than on most monitors).. my screen is 15.4" diagonal which means my pixels per inch is around 130 instead of your 96..
so text at 24pixels high on my screen appears smaller than on yours.

Helvetica Neue is the default font used by most mac apps.. sketchup default text is tacoma but i changed it in my template to Helvetica Neue some time ago..

at first i thought that might be the problem but it's not.. i think if i share a .skp with you which contains a font which isn't on your system, your sketchup will just replace the font with something you do have (probably tacoma)..

i believe the problem i was experiencing (basically, the person i sent a .skp to couldn't understand my text because it was enlarging/overlapping itself and creating a big mess of text) has to do with difference in resolution and me setting the font size via points instead of height.

mac1

Thanks for the info. Learn something from you every day.
A word of caution. The 5" font is not adaptive with the model size. It stays the same even for a small model. Scale your 5" test down and see what happens.

caronte01

Hi Jeff

I think what you are experiencing may have to do with a bug I ran into recently. Apparently windows and mac versions of sketchup have different ways of measuring text height!

Simple test. Create a 3d object on the pc, using arial for example. Note the text height used. Save the file. Open that same file on a mac. Try and recreate the same text, using the previous parameters. Compare. ,!!! No matter what you try, they will not match.