Gerber OMEGA CP, Reference Manual

Page: 565 / 826

551
Chapter 50:
Designing and Building Your Own Fonts
Gerber has many fonts available for purchase. The Font Designer program for OMEGA enables
you to build your own fonts.
After creating the font characters, save each of them to an individual PLT file, then process them
through the Font Designer program. You can then access this new font through OMEGA
Composer.
This chapter provides instructions and practice exercises for creating standard, connected, and
clean out fonts using OMEGA Composer and Font Designer, including:
♦
Introduction to font designing gives a brief overview of the font creation process,
including software use, steps required to prepare the files for use in Font Designer,
and the types of fonts that can be built.
♦
Inputting the artwork covers the procedures to follow before using the Font Designer
program. It includes guidelines for the different ways of inputting the artwork, the
required processing in Composer, and file naming conventions. Creation of the
artwork for the font is beyond the scope of this chapter.
♦
Building the font explains how to use the Font Designer program to make a font from
the individual PLT files you have created.
♦
Font creation exercises contain step-by-step procedures for building a standard font, a
connected font, and a clean out font.
Introduction to font designing
Building a font is a four-step process. How you complete some of the steps depends upon the
source of your artwork, how you bring it into Composer, and how you save the individual PLT
files that form each font character.
To understand font designing
1
Obtain the artwork:
♦
Draw it or copy it.
♦
Create it with graphic software.
♦
Modify an existing Gerber font in Composer.
2
Input the artwork into Composer by:
♦
Scanning.
♦
Digitizing on a tablet.
♦
On-screen digitizing in Composer.
♦
Importing into Composer.