Create Letters panel

Use the Create Letters function to create alphanumeric characters comprised of lines, arcs, and NURBS splines. You can enter letters by typing them or by loading them from a compatible file.

  • Mastercam contains pre-defined letter files in four fonts: Block, Box, Roman, and Slant. Each file contains a letter or character comprised of lines, arcs, and splines. You can customize any Mastercam font by opening the file for each letter. To prevent overwriting Mastercam’s pre-defined letter files, save the edited file to a different folder. When selecting a customized Mastercam font, select Mastercam (Other) from the Style drop-down list. Use Browse to navigate to the folder where your font is stored.
  • Mastercam can also create letters from any TrueType font on your system. Select the TrueType button to select one of these fonts. When using TrueType fonts, the height of the actual letters may not match the value that you entered for letter height because Mastercam scales the letters based on all of the information encoded into the TrueType font, including blank space around the letters. Use Scale on the Transform tab to resize them as needed.
  • Drafting fonts provided with Mastercam can be formatted using Note text parameters accessed from the Advanced tab. The drafting fonts appear in the Style drop-down list.

When you set the Style to Mastercam (Box) font in Create Letters, all the letters are created as uppercase letters regardless of how you type them in the dialog box.

To set the Mastercam (Box) font selection to display a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters (exactly as you type them in Create Letters), follow these steps:

  1. Open Windows Explorer to display the files and folders on your computer.
  2. Choose the \common\fonts\Box folder in your Mastercam directory.
  3. Open the Box Lowercase.zip file and extract all its files to the \common\fonts\Box folder.
  4. Allow the letters.dat file to be overwritten.
  5. Create your letters and they will display with uppercase and lowercase letters.

To reset the Mastercam (Box) font selection to always display uppercase letters, follow these steps:

  1. Open Windows Explorer to display the files and folders on your computer.
  2. Choose the \common\fonts\Box folder in your Mastercam directory.
  3. Select and delete all the mcam files that begin with char (such as char033.mcam, and char034.mcam).
  4. Open the Box Uppercase.zip file and extract all its files to the \common\fonts\Box folder.
  5. Allow the letters.dat file to be overwritten.
  6. Create your letters in a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters and they will display only as uppercase letters.

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