Text looks different from the original
- Who this affects
- Drawings made in AutoCAD and other CAD programs, and drawings using fonts that are not installed on this computer.
- Why it happens
- Musa CAD cannot use AutoCAD's SHX font files and draws them with its own single-stroke font. A TrueType font that is not installed is replaced by a lookalike or by the same single-stroke font.
SHX fonts become Musa CAD’s own font
Section titled “SHX fonts become Musa CAD’s own font”AutoCAD’s classic fonts, such as txt.shx, simplex.shx, romans.shx and isocp.shx, are single-stroke fonts in Autodesk’s own file format. Musa CAD does not read those files. It draws all of them with its built-in single-stroke font, which looks close to them and keeps the thin “CAD” look.
The text keeps its position, height, width factor and slant. Only the letter shapes differ slightly, so long lines of text may end a little earlier or later than in AutoCAD.
A TrueType font is not installed
Section titled “A TrueType font is not installed”When a drawing asks for a TrueType font your computer does not have, Musa CAD looks for a lookalike:
| Requested | Used instead, if installed |
|---|---|
| Arial, Helvetica | Liberation Sans, then DejaVu Sans |
| Times New Roman | Liberation Serif, then DejaVu Serif |
| Courier New | Liberation Mono, then DejaVu Sans Mono |
Any other missing font is drawn with the built-in single-stroke font. To get the original look, install the font and open the drawing again.
Boxes or missing characters
Section titled “Boxes or missing characters”A font may not contain every character in the text, such as a symbol or a letter from another alphabet. You can find every such place with the command line:
musacad --check drawing.musaIt reports text that uses a character its font cannot draw, as well as text that overlaps other text or runs outside the drawing frame. It exits with code 4 when it finds a problem. Add --json for a report a script can read.
Symbols such as ° and ± show as codes
Section titled “Symbols such as ° and ± show as codes”Musa CAD understands AutoCAD’s text codes, so %%d shows as °, %%p as ± and %%c as ⌀. A code such as \U+00B0 shows the Unicode character with that number. When you edit the text, you see the codes again. This is on purpose, so the text saves back unchanged.
Formatted text from AutoCAD
Section titled “Formatted text from AutoCAD”Multiline text keeps AutoCAD’s formatting codes, and Musa CAD draws them: heights, colours, fonts, underlines and stacked fractions. Vertical text styles are not supported yet.
If the text is fine on screen but wrong on paper, see A plot or PDF looks wrong.