This blog describes how to create a client
logo for the borders of the client’s project.
Logos are an important part of projects
and when possible should be included on the drawings issued to the client. The best way to include the logo is to place it
on the border as part of the template file used to create new drawings.
If you need to obtain a logo, this can sometimes
be plucked from the client’s web site (right click > Save Image As), from a Google
image search, or as a last resort scan a business card. I prefer the Google image search and try
filtering the image size to large. Make
sure it matches the client’s business card to make sure you have the most
recent logo. Logos change over the years.
It is best to recreate the logo in
AutoCAD because the vector format scales best and usually looks better than an
image when printed. Images can look pixilated or generally pretty bad if they
are not hi-res images.
Bring the image into AutoCAD.
Preferably bring it into a drawing that has a border in it. Place, rotate and
scale the image where it should be on the border. You may temporarily rotate the UCS or even the
border and logo if necessary to work with the logo ‘right side up’.
Trace over the logo with AutoCAD lines,
polylines, arcs, etc. to recreate the graphic part of the logo. Hatching can be done with a tight spaced ansi
31. Solid hatching is generally not necessary. Polyline widths other than 0 are
not recommended either. I generally make
the current layer an odd color so I can see what I’m drawing over the logo.
For the text portion of the logo, try
to use a font that matches as closely as possible to the logo’s font. A good
way of doing this is to use Word. Start a Word file and type in the text from
the logo. Now highlight that text and run through the fonts in Word to figure
out what most closely matches the logo. This might take a while… I’ve found if
you pick on the font pulldown in Word, then use your arrow keys, you can scroll
down the list pretty quickly. Much quicker that using the pulldown and picking
on the fonts one at a time. If you find a good match, make a note of the name
of the font and use that font in AutoCAD to create the logo text style. Keep
looking though because there might be an even better match. If you cannot find
a good match, you may have to carefully trace over the text in AutoCAD with
lines and arcs.
Once you have the text in AutoCAD, (you
will have to explode it if it is Mtext) you will need to adjust height and
width with the properties manager to get the AutoCAD text to match the logo
text. You may need to edit the style to fiddle around with the oblique angle as
well. Try to get it to match perfectly. Companies spend a lot of money creating
their logos. Respect that and try to get your logo to match theirs as close as
possible. It would be a slap in their face if you made a crappy looking logo
for them.
Once the text is done and looks good
use TextExplode from the Express tools to explode it into polylines. This
prevents the text from changing if someone should redefine the text style or if
a font is missing from someone’s machine.
Here’s a neat trick. You’ll find that textexploding
the text creates all sorts of lines you may not want. Here’s what you do. Type
REGION and select all the polylines that were created from exploding the text. Now
type UNION and select all the new regions. You now have better looking text
shaped polygons, but they are still regions. If you want them as polylines so
you van further edit them, draw a single rectangle around the all the regions
and use the BOUNDARY command to create polylines around the regions. Erase all
the regions. (Use QUICKSELECT to filter out and select all the regions). Now
you can edit and hatch the polylines if necessary.
Create Layers called
T-xxx-LOGO-yyy where xxx is the client
name and yyy is the logo description such as color or text. Make the layers the appropriate colors and change
the logo entities to the appropriate layers.
The naming is clearly optional for your purposes, but you probably don’t
want the logo entities to be on the layer C-DIMS or something.
Finally, once all is created, scaled,
and colored, you can restore the World UCS and/or rotate your logo and border
back to where they should be. Detach the image. Erase the border. Set the
current layer to 0 and purge audit purge the drawing.
Save the logo as XXX-LOGO where XXX is
the Client name. Again, name it whatever you like. Save the logo in a general
location where you can find it later. We sometimes Xref the logos in case there
is a change midway through the project. We also keep all our logos (and other
general blocks) in a place called P:\acad\blocks\general.
I know a lot of this was just common
sense, but I hope this has been somewhat helpful in some way.
‘til next time,
Lyle.
very helpful this post!!!
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