Before you go out and spend $79 – $500 for an “engraving” font package, read on. Dr. Engrave includes a unique feature that allows you to create them yourself.
The utility is called SFEdit and is included as part of the Dr. Engrave software package. This utility allows you to take any Windows Truetype font and convert it into a single line font. That means that if you have 2,000 Truetype fonts on your PC, you can have 2,000 single line fonts for use with Dr. Engrave. In addition, the SFEdit program allows you to edit the font library to “clean it up” to your liking. If you’ve never used the SFEdit program to create your own fonts here are the steps to follow.
- Create your document as you normally would and select the base font you would like to use. In this example I am using Arial.
- Click on Format and Make Stroke.
- In the Select Stroke Font prompt, give the stroke font a name. Since I am using an Arial font I will call this font Arial_SL (SL to note that it is a Single Line).Click OK.
- This will convert your font into a single line font. Don’t be too concerned if it doesn’t look pretty as the font can be edited and cleaned up for use. Note that this is a one-time function. Once the font is saved you will not have to go through this process again. To edit the font, select Format and Edit Stroke.
- The SFEdit utility will open, allowing you to edit and clean up your font library.
- We will edit the lower case “b” to show how the editing is done to clean up the font. Using the right arrow key next to the name we can switch between the letters.
- When you click on the circle within the letter “b” you will notice that the screen automatically switches to node edit mode. This allows you to move or delete nodes as you see fit.
- Using the node edit tools, adjust the nodes to your liking and then click File and Save. Close the SFEdit utility. You can do this for each letter listed in the utility.
- When you come back to Dr. Engrave you will notice that the font(s) adjust automatically.
- The best practice would be to take 30 minutes or so to create a complete adjusted library of single line fonts. To do this I recommend typing out the entire alphabet in both upper and lower case as well as all of your symbols and punctuation. Keep in mind that some fonts convert cleanly and require minimal adjustments/cleanup and others that convert poorly and require more time to adjust.
- It’s that easy to build your own unique single line font library for use with Dr. Engrave – and the cost to you is $0.00!
