Here are examples of text written in an outline font versus written in engraving font: Fonts like these are appropriate for pen plotters, machine tools, and other circumstances where the pen width itself is significant. In the upper box, both lines of text are drawn with a solid black fill, and no stroke (outline). The outline font is legible it looks as it is intended. The engraving font is basically illegible, since the enclosed area is not meaningful. In the lower box, both lines of text are drawn without any color fill, but instead with a solid black stroke. This renders the engraving text correctly. Now, there’s a time and place for both types of font face. Outline fonts are perfect for use with high-resolution raster imaging devices, like LCD screens and laser printers. In these cases there’s no significant penalty for filling in large regions.īut, if you use any of the physical fabrication methods that we’ve already mentioned, then there is usually a significant time cost to filling in large regions. For example with a pen plotter, it’s much faster to draw the outline of the engraving font than to raster back and forth to fill in the entire outline font area. The higher the pen resolution (the smaller the tip), the slower it will be. The same goes for text areas cut with a milling cutter on a CNC machine, certain types of laser-engraving, embroidery machines, and so on.Ī second reason (besides speed) to use engraving fonts with physical fabrication is that the tool size is often significant. The tool size could be the pen width (for a plotter), the cutter width for a milling machine, or the thread width for embroidery. You certainly can use an outline font and just trace its outline, but that can create legibility issues, especially if your tool is wide. By contrast, engraving fonts rely on the tool width to create the legibility.
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