Hello.
Does Rhino have such thing? Imagine you have a shape, such as a letter curve. You want to create a ‘thinner’ version. In any other packager I could use a bevel or inset scale but I cannot see these tools in Rhino?
Cheers.
I’m not sure I understand, but I’ll take a stab at it.
A curve created from a font character is just a curve. It is not an editable text character. It just looks like one.
The curve created from the text font character will look like the character. If the font has a skinny version (or bold/italic), that controls the created curve. There is nothing to edit it after the fact like an actual piece of text. It was just a convenient way to draw a curve shaped like a specific text character.
I’m I completely misunderstanding your question?
I didn’t asks good question.
Create a cylinder, scale in the top cap to create a cone. How? Taper seems to random a tool to sue for such a simple task. Now a cone can of course be made in many ways, but then take the method for the cylinder and apply it to a more complex shape.
Maybe you’re talking about Offset (curves) or OffsetSrf (Surfaces)? --Mitch
I don’t think so, from what I can tell about them they duplicate the geometry.
Create a solid cylinder, how would you scale one end so that it form a blunt cone?
subselect one of the ends then scale it.
that probably won’t work out right on all the different letters.
maybe chamferEdge on a solid letter… or offset then loft.
I’m not at a computer right now to try any of these but I think I understand what you’re trying to accomplish
I’ll try some stuff later if you don’t have a solution by then.
I can make a cylinder, a box, or extrude a text curve in to a solid, then sub-object select (Cmd+Shift) the top of the object, use Gumball to scale the surface (Shift and drag the square scaling tool), and taper the objects. I can’t scale the top to a point so I would have a truncated cone or box.
Is that the technique you’re looking for?
i’d be curious to see examples from “in any other package i could use a bevel or inset scale…”
doing this to any old font presents some challenges… i could see it being easier in an app like photoshop where it’s just sort of faked but once you get into the actual sizes of things, certain chamfers aren’t going to work out right…
_Chamfer would probably be the easiest way to do this but you have to find a font which will work well with it… (consistent widths, no serifs, no little curlyQs, etc… basic looking)
but here are some ideas…
1-3 = helvetica
• 1&2… flat text object-> _DupBorder-> _ExtrudeCrvTapered -> _Cap
• 3… _Offset -> Move vertical -> combo of Sweep2 and Loft
• 4… custom font-- all stroke widths are equal to allow for a consistent bevel angle along the centerline.
Hey Jeff, that’s a good trick! I never expected it to work that way, more like the sides converging to a single point.
But it can be done without the DupBorder by using ExtrudeSrfTapered straight away on the (flat) text object.
Max.
ha… i didn’t even know that command existed… that seems like the easiest way… with dupBorder and extrudeCrvTapered, i had to extrude each curve of the letter individually… with extrudeSrfTapered, it works in one go 
doing it with extrudeSrfTapered also makes it pretty easy to do a bunch of text at once…
make the flat _textObject, select all, _extrudeSrfTapered, select all, _Join, _Cap
in this instance using helvetica nueu at a height of 5units then extruded .6 units and -15º draft angle, only the ‘h’ has failed and would required individual attention…
You don’t need to cap it when you tick option ‘Solid’ in ExtrudeSrfTapered.
(Looks like the ‘h’ failed on the narrow part of the letter, where the sides touch and there is no top surface left.)
Max.
oh. right. the solid option.
but yeah… this probably isn’t the best font to be doing this with…too much variance in the stroke width so you can only extrude as high as the skinniest portion of all the letters will allow.
here are a few fixed width fonts which may work out better… (haven’t tried any… not sure how well they’ll translate into rhino geometry)
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=503
i think some of those may be ‘fixed width’ in the sense that each letter is the same overall width but others appear to be ‘fixed width’ in that each stroke width is the same.