Please follow the format below for requesting a feature.
The problem that this feature will solve:
There is an unpredictable bug when extruding text. Some faces will not extrude, rendering this feature less than ideal. Some characters will not emboss without manually adding more lines to the characters. It is time consuming to figure out where the problem area is, and it is not obvious like the curves aren’t closed. A face of the character CAN be selected but CANNOT be extruded.
Consider adding screenshots and as many details as possible, to help the Shapr3D team and the community understand why you need this feature. Describing your workflow helps us building the right feature.
Thanks for summarising the request, this is noted. To share a little bit more background info on this feature. When we released the text tool we balanced between supporting only a handful of fonts vs including all system and installed fonts and we went with the latter, but this added the risk that we won’t be able to handle all the font types perfectly. The workaround currently is as you mentioned to manually fix the sketch issues, or moving forward with a simpler font type.
To manage your expectations, revisiting this part of the text tool is not on our roadmap right now as it has lower priority than the items we are currently working on.
To take a more complete note of the request can you elaborate more on the other needs (and/or blocked workflows) you have that are not connected to 3D printing?
Could you please also share some more info; why does something that looks like a good closed face which is selectable as a face not extrude? It seems that if a planar object can be selected as a face it would have passed the requirements to be extruded. When I looked at @Johngerard post, my first thought was that “felt marker” typeface should be well behaved with regard to extrusion. This is obviously not the case. And when I isolated the spot causing the problem, it looked like a good continuous line.
While I can put text on my 3D prints when I slice them, generally I like to do most text in Shapr3D. This keeps the text with the design. For embossing version numbers, I do use a simple font that has always worked; it is the times I want to be more expressive with text that I have encountered the subject font problem.
The only other time I had a problem was in creating a visualization of a new building with a sign. The sign needed a font that misbehaved and required manual intervention to be able to make the signpost look etched in stone.
I don’t know if this issue would be a problem to the CNC or Laser cutting/etching people, but suspect it would impact the creation of assets by 3D game artists.
There is a topic in the manual:
which has a note that some fonts may not work properly. Perhaps that article could be expanded with a list of typefaces known not to exhibit this problem.
I do appreciate and agree the lower priority than getting the HBPM released and other pressing issues. I hope that it does get in the queue in the future.
Great call!! I think the existing method is much better than if it were restricted to just a few “known good” fonts. I would rather have to work on making some characters extrude than to be restricted in what font I can use. It just gets a tedious, like chiseling the letters from stone.
I certainly could not see any hiccup in the sketch. But, I’ll leave good enough alone. Please keep this request in the file for the next work on Text enhancements. Thanks.
