Font compatibility

Hi,
I’m interested in buying this one line font to use with carbide create. Does anyone know if the font is fully compatible? Has anyone tried it yet?
The font is the OLF simple sans language bundle

http://www.onelinefonts.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=135&products_id=318

Thanks for your help

No idea, but any chance you can find something close enough on a free font site like https://www.dafont.com/ ??

Haven’t found anything for languags like Cyrillic, chinese, Japanese and Korean unfortunately.

Interesting. FWIW, this site was listed at: Shapeoko CNC Router, Rigid, Accurate, Reliable, and Affordable

Going back to the home page: http://www.onelinefonts.com/ they note:

Each font/s you purchase will include 4 TTF font files:

  1. Universal- The universal font format has curved single line shapes designed to have minimal lifts, but your machine will likely trace the path twice. This format should work with most programs.
  2. SP- The ‘SP’ format will contain (SP) in the name, for straight path, is more specialized and is designed to trace the path only once. The SP format does require that curves be made up of lines, and thus far has been confirmed to be effective in Camworks® and SolidCam.
  3. OC- The ‘OC’ format for open curve uses bezier curves & traces only once. It requires that the software provider make a simple adjustment to ensure that the ‘OC’ font files are rendered correctly. Enroute 6, FeatureCAM 2014, Make the Cut, Rhinoceros®, Solid Edge ST9®, SolidWorks 2014, Visualmill®, Text Sketcher®, WoodWOP2014, Hundegger, & Impact currently have a “single line font” feature that will correctly draw this font format.
  4. OPF- The .opf (open path) font extension is recognized only by Make The Cut® to have a clean single line font with curved lines that only trace once.

I suspect that only the first sort would work (normally TrueType fonts are supposed to be closed paths, hence “outline”) perhaps one of the others would as well. Or it may be that Carbide Create misliking overlapping paths will not work well. Perhaps buy one of the fonts from the “Bargain Bin” to test? Here’s a discussion of the technical aspect: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44695400/single-line-truetype-fonts

See one instance of faking this out:

http://www.mrrace.com/CamBam_Fonts/

When you use them they will truly cut in a single line. Your cutter will go over each letter twice, once in each direction, and exactly on the same path no matter what size you engrave, even if they are 12 inches high!

There are some other options for single line fonts, notably the Hershey Fonts: Shapeoko CNC Router, Rigid, Accurate, Reliable, and Affordable

Hey Adriano! I’ve actually spent the past week trying to figure out the exact same thing. My conclusions so far:

  • The Universal format from OLF is currently the only one that works in Carbide Create (or most graphic design software). It works because it’s not actually a single line font - it’s just a regular bubble font where both sides of the letter’s outline happen to be positioned directly on top of one another, making it appear like a single line. The other formats (like OC) don’t work in Carbide Create because it wants the font’s letters to be complete, closed shapes, so it adds extra lines to close them. (For example, the letter V would have a line added to the top, turning it into a triangle.)

  • While the Universal format looks perfect, a small problem is that each letter is still being formed by 2 identical, connected lines - so when you create the toolpath to send to your CNC, the CNC traces each letter twice (accomplishing nothing the 2nd time), doubling the amount of machine time required. My thought is that in the future, a (hopefully) simple update could be made to Carbide Create to find & delete these redundant paths in the gcode - but I’m not a programmer, so perhaps that’s more complicated than it seems.

  • If you want to test this out for yourself, there’s a link on the OLF homepage to download a free sample font with just the letters A, B, C, & D included. The download includes all 4 font formats, so you can try each one and see how it works (or doesn’t work) in Carbide Create.

Hope that helps! I’d be interested to hear anything new that you figure out.

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Jenn, Thanks that helps alot!