3D Text Issues - Spacing?

Hi all,

I am wishing to add a certain amount of spacing in my 3D text, in order to make my sign look realistic. However, I cannot find any option to do so. Putting double spaces between every letter is just too overkill.

If anybody knows how to put a certain amount of spacing to letters, please reply.

Thanks is advance :slight_smile:

You can use the move tool to position the letters…

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Thank you Cotty! :slight_smile:
I appreciate it!

To expand slightly on Cotty’s answer: once they are created, the characters in 3D text are just regular geometry. You can move the individual characters, or scale them, or whatever you want.

-Gully

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Thanks Gully! Yeah, I thought like an option would be available like is Microsoft Word where you can put a certain mm measurement between letters but thanks to you two I have realised you just move the individual characters.

Thanks you very much once again :smiley:

You can use other geometry (e.g. an equally divided line) as reference for the inferencing while moving…

Yea, that’d be real nice, except Microsoft in the past hasn’t shared their text engine from Word like Apple shares theirs, which is why on Mac you can adjust Kern and Ligature on text apps like LayOut.

How about Adobe? I understand that on the Mac it is totally about PostScript, and for, for instance, PDFs to be cross-platform. the same functionality must lurk somewhere inside Acrobat and other Adobe applications…

Kerning must almost always be done by the eye to look good, letters can seldom be spaced absolutely equally. The old rule of thumb says that the areas of the gaps between letters should be roughly equal for the result to look even. In your example, for instance, the space between the H and E would be the largest, the one between E and L slightl smaller, and the space between the L and O would be the smallest of them all.

Anssi

Adobe limits the usage of that by license. However, ghostscript lurks (in terminal, do “apropos pdf”).

I would say, look into what OpenOffice and LibreOffice have in their code.

For kerning that has to be very specific this is my method:

  1. create text layout/kerning in illustrator/photoshop/etc
  2. outline text to vector format
  3. Export as .dwg
  4. Import into skp and push/pull

Click into the group that sketchup creates and move the letters individually. Keep in mind that the text command is sketchup can not be edited after you create it, so double check your spelling or you will have to start from scratch.