- [Instructor] Another great feature
to use when sketching is the Text feature.
Let's go ahead and add some text to this
sketch that I've already started.
So, I'm going to go ahead and single
click on this and edit my sketch.
You can see here that I've got a construction
line and a regular line drawn in.
Let's assume that this is a sign or something like that
and I want to create some text inside of it.
So, first we go up to the Text tool, click on Text.
By definition it wants you to define a curve
that it can exist on, so I'm going to go ahead
and select this construction line.
So, that's my line that basically defines
the line the sketch is going to be written on,
so let's add some text here.
So, you can see as I type it gives me a preview here.
Just like you would in Microsoft Word
or any other word editor, you have your options
down here for editing the text, so you can
flip it on each side of the line.
You can flip its direction back and forth.
You can make it bold or italic if you want.
You can use the document font that's predefined
in the preferences, or you can deselect this
and edit things like spacing and size.
So, you can see here it's pretty easy to edit.
Gives you a lot of flexibility.
if you want, you can select Font
and go ahead and change the font, for example.
So, let's change this to Comic Sans MS, Bold Italic,
and let's beef it up a little bit, go to size 28.
Click Okay, and you can see it's updated in my preview here.
Now, up until this point I haven't actually added the text.
Now, I can go through and edit it as much as I want,
change it so I'm editing text and adding changes.
Now, you can see as I keep typing,
based on the size that I defined it
does not keep generating the text out.
It only goes to the edge of the line.
So, if I grab this line now and drag
it out afterwards we'll get that text
to be able to fit, but right now it won't.
It'll just stop where it can fit as much as it can.
Now, to actually add the text I have to go
ahead and hit this green check mark.
You know, you don't want to deselect
the line or something like that.
First you want to hit the green check mark
with the line selecting, and now I've added that text.
I can also add that to a regular line as well.
It does not have to be a construction line.
Just click Okay and I've added that text.
Now, if I want to use this text and be able to,
you know, set a tool path around it, for example,
what you're going to have to do is right click
on this and dissolve the sketch text.
This is going to actually dissolve that text
down to its actual sketch entities
so it can be followed to create a path.
So, I'm going to go ahead and select that and see what happens.
Now, you can see here the X is now a number
of line entities that I can actually
adjust and change if I want to.
I'm going to go ahead and undo that,
but also we've created a number of splines and arcs
to make up the smooth characters in our text as well,
so you'll notice that now we have splines
that can be adjusted in all different ways,
but what this does is gives you the ability
to assign a path to this or make this a continuous line
that can be later followed by an engraver
or another tool if you're going to have this fabricated.
But if you just want the regular text
you can just leave it as-is and go ahead
and make an extrusion, for example.
So, I'm going to exit this sketch, click on my Features,
select this sketch, and make an extrusion.
(clicks)
Now, you can see for this extrusion
I've got the Contour tool down here,
so it's deselected from my text.
If I went in here and selected the contours inside of
the text (clicks) I could drop those out as well.
Got to have the selection tool on.
(clicks) Oh, I'm actually dragging my length.
I keep selecting the wrong thing accidentally,
but you can see here as I go in,
and I've got to be careful to select the actual contour.
Select that sketch region and we'll select
another sketch region, and you can see
what it does to editing your boss.
So, dissolving that sketch can be really, really useful.
I'll just delete this real quick.
Now, if we want to go in and edit it
we just go in and edit our sketch,
select somewhere on the text and double click,
and then we can go back in and edit this text.
Make any changes that we need,
flip direction, flip size, whatever we feel like.
Hit Okay, and then leave the sketch.
So, very easily and very quickly,
that's just using the Text feature,
which is located right here, for sketches.