You can explodes text in FastCAD to "glyphs" (basic entities). The SHX-fonts are not supported.

Exploded texts will be built up by:

• FNT - Arcs and lines
• TTF - Paths and B-Splines

The TEXPLODE command will generate the items as a group, while the TERXPLODEMP will generate a filled Multipoly. A group is easier to modify, while a filled multipoly will reproduce a TTF text.

Since TTF is scaled differently depending on the zoom-scale the explode text can sometimes differ from the original. There is also a small difference between different fonts. FNT texts is always an exact explode.

Explodes will be especially useful on TTF. A great new tool to create logotypes. This will also solve problems of printing TTFs on certain plotters.

Multi-line texts has to be exploded before using TEXPLODE on them

A new improved text placement command. Entering the text is done in the same way as the normal TEXT command. The placement is however improved. It's absolutely perfect for numbering. See what the arrow keys do!

• Press CTRL to scale the text - with better control than TEXT
• Press SHIFT to rotate the text by 15°
• Press SHIFT and CTRL to rotate the text freely

The current height (while scaling) or the current angle (while rotating) is displayed on the status bar.

You are also able to change the justification in "mid-command": (both numbers and letters are available for some of the commands)

• Press L or type 1 to set left justify
• Press C or type 2 to set center justify
• Press R or type 3 to set right justify
• Press K or type 4 to keep your current settings as default
• Press D or type 5 to reset the text properties to default
• Press B to set bottom justify
• Press M to set middle justify
• Press T to set top justify
• Press F to set far justifification
• Press N to set normal justifification
• Press S to flip bold (strong) property on and off
• Press U to flip underline property on and off
• Press I to flip italic property on and off
• Press O to flip outline property on and off
• Enter a negative value to change the text height. I.e. -3 will set 3 units height.
• Press TAB to flip between 0° and 90° degrees.

The arrow keys can be used to increment/decrement numbers in the text. UP/DOWN will increment/decrement the first number in the text and RIGHT/LEFT will increment/decrement the last.

Example text: 8'7"

• Pressing UP gives: 9'7"
• Pressing DOWN gives: 7'7"
• Pressing LEFT gives: 8'6"
• Pressing RIGHT gives: 8'8"

Text placement will continue until it is cancelled. This allows to place more than one text that is equal or just differs in numbers.

TEX is the normal command, TEXM the macro version and TEXML is just like TEX, but opens up in multi-line mode. NUMBER will increment the text after every placed text. This is useful for series like: R6, R7, R8, ...

These commands use one text as an original and allows to modify the text and then place it just like TEX does. After selecting the text to copy settings from, the normal text dialog is displayed. You can modify the text as well as text properties. TEXCOPY keeps the original text, while TEXEDIT erases the text.

Right clicking when asked for position with TEXEDIT will place the text at its original location and terminate the command.

Don't use too large integer increments. These will take time to calculate.

A multi text editor. Selected texts will be marked by a crosshair in database order and a dialog box to edit the text appears. This is a useful command to change a lot of text after for example copying a part from another part of the drawing.

Trying to find a text in the drawing? TFIND will allow you to search for texts and part of texts. The result is displayed in dialog box where you can zoom to a text or select all found texts.

Text search can be performed on a whole text string, part of text or the beginning of a text. There are options to match case sensitivity and to restrain only to visible texts. If not 'Only visible' is checked all texts will be searched. This might be somewhat confusing since it doesn't follow the FastCAD standard. Please remember that a multiline text is one text and you will need to search for part of string to be able to find a line in that string.

The search result is presented in a dialog box. Only the 256 first entries will be displayed. The text, layer name and position is displayed. Number of decimal places is controlled from standard settings.

The view button will move the zoom center to the origin of the text, without changing visible layers or magnifying factor. The OK button selects all found texts. These can then be selected by Prior (or SELBYP). This allows you to select entities which contains a certian text string.

Replace a texts or part of texts. Searching for the text to replace is done in the same way as TFIND. Only selected, visible and non-frozen texts will be replaced.

If Prompt is checked a dialog box asking if you would like to replace the text (marked with a crosshair) appears.

Replace one will only replace one text (the first found in database order).

You can export selected texts in the drawing to a file. The texts can be sorted by:

• 0. Database order (normal)
• 1. Up-Down, Left-Right
• 2. Left-Right, Up-Down
• 3. Layer #, Up-Down
• 4. Layer #, Left-Right
• 5. Color #, Up-Down
• 6. Color #, Left-Right

The Up-Down order can be reversed so we get Down-Up order. There is also a reverse order for Left-Right.

The types 1-6 sort the exported text. The sorting is not very fast and will scan the database a lot. If you exports a lot of texts use the database order that is a lot faster.

TEXPORTM is the macro version of TEXPORT. The sort type can be a little confusing at first. Pick one of the numbers for sorting methods above. To reverse the Up-Down order add 10 to that number and to reverse the Left-Right order add 100.

For example to sort Down-Up enter code 11.

The text balloon command will create a an arrow with a circle at the end. Inside the circle will a text be displayed.

• You are first asked for the text to put inside the balloon. Enter a new text or accept the default. The arrow keys will increment or decrement any numbers in the text, just as TEX does.
• The second prompt is to place the arrow. The right mouse button will skip the arrow.

The font purge command will purge unused fonts. Fonts can be used in text, attribute and action entities.

This command will convert all text attributes not included in symbol references to text entities. Attributes with the display tag flag set will show the tag value, all other the value. Hidden attributes will not be converted.

Selected attributes are displayed in a dialog. The prompt (or tag) is displayed and the value can be edited. Attributes inside symbol references may also be edited this way. Limititaions:

• Max 100 attributes can be edited in one go
• Text length can't be longer than 64 characters.

As default a menu is automatically appended. The menu will be placed at the end of the menu bar, just before Help.

If you don't want the menu it can be turned off with the TEXTMENUOFF command. The TEXTMENUON command will turn it back on again. The state is stored in the registry so the menu will not appear again in the next session.

Both the commands require the menu to be reloaded. This is automatically done when you start a new FastCAD session.

The demo version is fully functional, except that it will limit the FastCAD or EasyCAD runtime to 15 minutes. After 15 minutes you will be asked if you like to save your drawing before quitting.

The text exploding commands will only explode the first character of every text.