Text alignment

Hi all.

I'm wondering if someone can give me a clear and concise description of the
rules regarding text orientation at angles. The way I work (and AutoCAD) is
that, if a vertical line is 0 degrees and I move clockwise, text radiates
from the centre out between 0 degrees and 179 degrees and the text radiates
towards the centre between 180 degrees and 359 degrees. I hope I described
that well enough. This is taking the bottom of a drawing as the base from
which it's worked out.
I'm being forced into having an argument about this by an engineer who has
never been near a drawing board or a cad workstation in his life.

TIA

Graeme

 

Don't understand what you're saying, but......the standard method is that text
(and everything else) is rotated COUNTERCLOCKWISE - unless you purposely change
this so rotation is clockwise. Therefore, if you have your text at an angle of
15 deg, it will go up from left to right at an angle of 15 deg.

 

Ok I'll try and explain what I mean.

If I have a vertical line the text along that line should read from bottom
to top. If I rotate that line and text counterclockwise slightly the text
should now be written from top to bottom because if it read from bottom to
top it would effectively be upside down.
Maybe I should post a drawing in customer files.

Graeme

 

Also, in Autocad if you have a vertical line dimensioned and then rotate the
dimension slightly counterclockwise the text will automatically change
orientation.

Graeme

 

Concider a horizontal line 0 degrees. Text would be along
the line at 0 degrees. As the line is rotated counter
clockwise to vertical (90 degrees) the text rotates with it.
Once the line goes beyond 90 degrees the text goes on top of
and along the line reading from top to bottom, left to
right. This would be true all the way to 180 degrees where
the text would be back at 0 degrees on top of the line. I
believe the general rule of thumb is, text reads from the
bottom or the right side of the drawing. I'm sure there
will be exceptions to this but it's a place to start.

Pete

 

Thanks Peter.

My situation just now is that I have a building which has one part that is
square and the other part is rotated 4 degrees counterclockwise. So, the
"vertical" text is from bottom to top in the square part and the "vertical"
text in the rotated part goes from top to bottom. The engineer thinks that
this text is upside down.
I told him that it is drawn correctly and that to do it the way he wants the
text would be upside down.

Graeme

 

Text should read from the bottom of the sheet and the right side of the
sheet without being "upside down." By this standard, the engineer is
correct. Look at the drawing from the right side. The text appears upside
down. Not good.

 

Then can you please tell me at what angle counterclockwise from vertical
does the vertical text become upside down. Everyone agrees that 45 degrees
would be upside down. For me, reading from the bottom comes before the right
hand side, so as soon as it goes past vertical it is upside down.

Graeme

 

If you are writing about text only - and not dimension text - then when you
rotate text from a horizontal position you get the following; in this example,
I rotated the text and a line 30 deg and again 120 deg. Of course, once you go
past 90 deg, the text is upside down.

[Image]

 

Agreed but if you do it like the engineer suggests, is the text not readable
(mostly upright) from bothe the bottom and right as opposed to your
inclination which makes it read upside down when viewed from the right side
of the sheet?

Perhaps MOST readable from both bottom and right will help. Yes, from the
bottom is preferable but which is most readable from both?

 

Thanks to everyone who replied.

I was vindicated. My boss phoned up a drafter that he's known for years and
asked him what the convention was and he agreed with me. So now I don't have
to convince anyone. It was just unfortunate that I had to tell both my
bosses (engineers) that I wasn't gonna draw something wrong just because
they dont think I drew it correct.

Graeme

 

Basically the text in a drawing should read correctly when viewed from
the bottom or the left of the sheet.

There are odd cases where the text is near but not vertical, and with
CAD and dimensions, this depends on what the programmer has done to
decide when the text flips from one direction to the other.

In the old days of manual draughting, you would generally use something
like within 15 degrees of vertical after which the text would flip, but
it was generally how things looked at the time.

--

Regards,

Ian A. White, CPEng

WAI Engineering
Sydney 2000
Australia

Ph: +61 418 203 229
Fax: +61 2 9622 0450
Home Page: www.wai.com.au

 

Just realised a mistake. That should be the bottom or RIGHT of the
sheet.

SAT

--

Regards,

Ian A. White, CPEng

WAI Engineering
Sydney 2000
Australia

Ph: +61 418 203 229
Fax: +61 2 9622 0450
Home Page: www.wai.com.au

 

Thank you Ruul.

A picture tells a thousand words.

That is exactly how I do it.

Graeme