TextObject comments

Haven’t had occasion to use this in the WIP yet until now.

I have found the following technical issues:

  • Last used height doesn’t stick between uses
    (always goes back to whatever the active annotation style height is)

  • Last used text doesn’t stick between uses (window is always blank)

  • If justification is set to centered/centered, the insertion point is still in the lower left corner - you have to check “Use text center to position”… Why?

In general I find that having TextObject rely on annotation style settings in the WIP (as Text does) is not extremely handy and a step backwards from V5 as far as usability is concerned. A TextObject is not an annotation IMO. If the relationship Annotation style <> TextObject is deemed necessary for certain purposes, please give us a switch to turn that behavior off if we want to.

Thanks, --Mitch

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Hi Mitch - the main idea was to allow using some the rich text stuff - not necessarily annotation styles, I agree we could dissociate that bit, if RT can be used without. Does that much of it seem useful?

-Pascal

Yes, I guess right/left/center justification might be useful… Otherwise, as this doesn’t really create editable text anyway, I don’t know why all the other RT stuff might be necessary… And as you can always explode normal text blocks that do have all the RT stuff to get curve geometry…

–Mitch

I noticed that the font goes back to Arial every time the command is used. We have our own custom engraving font that is used 100% of the time with this command (which we use constantly). In it’s current state, the TextObject command is going to be very frustrating.

Dan

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Yeah, I think it always resets itself to whatever the current annotation style text font/size/etc. is… Annoying to say the least. --Mitch

Hi Mitch - OK, I was thinking more of the ability to mix fonts, bold, italic etc., multiline text - that stuff.

-Pascal

Thanks, all-

https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-40066

I’d like to hear about whether you think the rich text controls are useful in this context at all, assuming the gripes outlined so far can be handled.

thanks,
-Pascal

Yeah, I guess so, I wonder how many people will use it that way is all… --M

Hi Mitch - right, we don’t know either because we’ve never had that ability … I would like to keep it in, if we can without making a mess of the utility you-all need.

Tim thinks there’s hope - the not remembering the previous text was fixed at some point but then broken again and he’s going to re-fix. That should help not only that problem in itself, but also the reverting to Arial since the previous text will be as it was, He’s looking into just remembering a font and height, dissociating from Annotation Styles but keeping the rich text.

I don’t see why text objects cannot eventually be editable like text as well. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

-Pascal

Hi Pascal,

We use the TextObject command a lot, but it is 100% used for creating text to engrave on our CNC machines. I’m not really in a position to comment on the usefulness of the new “bells and whistles”.

Dan

OK - thanks - at the moment I think we’ll be able to eat our cake and have it…

-Pascal

Yeah, that would be really great!

Philip

Hi, I use text a lot to mark parts to be machined. It is very helpfull if the latest settings and latest text stay.
Wish: automatic change of number in text, example: L B 1, L B 2 etc. the first caracters stay the same, the number goes up automaticly. Very handy for numbering parts.
Wish: text which is made of single curves. For V5 i have a script, in V6 it is not working.

Cheers, Albert

RH-40066 is fixed in the latest WIP

I’m finding that the -TextObject command (hyphenated so that the interface is suppressed) doesn’t work. I can’t get the text string entered to actually apply

Text String ( Style=Default Height=5 Rotation=0 )Hello

will appear as “Rhino”.

Also, there are very few options exposed. I hope there are plans to work on this command so it’s usable in a macro or script!

Thanks,

Dan

Hi @DanBayn,

Thanks for reporting this.

https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-41442

– Dale

RH-41442 is fixed in the latest WIP

Thanks. I will test in the morning.

Hi Dale,

It looks like some code has “leaked” here:

Also…

I seem to be getting hung up on the font in the scripted version:

-TextObject Height=6 Rotation=0 Font=Arial Italic=No Bold=No CreateGeometry=Curves GroupOutput=Yes AllowSingleStrokeFonts=Yes LowerCaseAsSmallCaps=No AddSpacing=Yes Spacing=0.333 UseTextCenterToPosition=No “Hey there!”

…is getting hung up at the Font= entry. If I remove it, the scripted command works well.

-TextObject Height=6 Rotation=0 Italic=No Bold=No CreateGeometry=Curves GroupOutput=Yes AllowSingleStrokeFonts=Yes LowerCaseAsSmallCaps=No AddSpacing=Yes Spacing=0.333 UseTextCenterToPosition=No “Hey there!”

Although it’s probably my mistake (seems it almost always is!!) I can’t figure out how to control the font. Is this related to the exposed code that we see in the illustration above?

Thanks,

Dan

Hi @DanBayn,

What you are seeing the the raw rich text (RTF) that the command remembered from the previous execution.

@lowell, @pascal, perhaps the scriptable version of the TextObject command shouldn’t show what was remembered?

– Dale