Text & Leaders

Text is half of every exhibit. Studio edits it in place on the canvas, at the drawing's zoom and rotation, so a label is set where it will sit rather than in a dialog somewhere else.

Creating Text

1. Choose Text on the DRAW tab.
2. Click where the text should start. An editing box opens, matched to the current zoom, rotation and alignment.
3. Type. Enter makes a new line.
4. Ctrl+Enter, or clicking away, commits. Esc cancels.

The text object is only created when you commit something non-empty, so an abandoned click leaves nothing behind. To edit existing text, double-click it.

Creating a Leader

1. Choose Leader on the DRAW tab.
2. Click the arrow tip, which is what the leader points at.
3. Click where the text should sit. The editing box opens.
4. Type and commit as above.

The leader lands with a horizontal landing on the correct side of the text automatically. Selecting it shows square handles at the arrow point and the text; drag either to adjust. Dragging the body moves the whole leader. Double-click to re-edit the text.

The Text Tab

Control	Notes
Content	A multi-line box, updating the canvas live. The scene tree name follows the first line until you rename the object yourself.
Font Family	Grouped list: hand-lettering faces that ship with the app, then a Recommended group of stock Windows families that survive being shared between machines, then everything installed.
Keep this font in every look	Pins this object's font so the look's lettering does not replace it.
Font Size (pt)	Points on the sheet.
Horizontal Alignment	Left, Center or Right.
Vertical Alignment	Baseline, Top, Middle or Bottom.
Bold / Italic	Uses the family's real bold and italic faces where they exist, and synthesizes them where they do not.
Halo / Mask	None, Halo (outline) or Mask (box), with a color and a halo width in points.
Override Layer Color	Gives this text its own color instead of the layer's. Clearing it returns to the layer color; setting the color back to the layer's clears the override automatically.
Text Color	RGB sliders, hex entry, swatches and the full picker.

The Leader Tab

All of the lettering controls above, plus:

Control	Notes
Arrowhead	Filled, Open, Dot or Tick.
Arrow Size (pt)	Sized in points, like the text.

Halo and Mask

A label over a hatched planting bed or a marker fill is unreadable without help. Two ways to fix it:

• Halo (outline) draws a soft outline in the halo color around the letterforms. Keeps the fill visible through the label. Usually the better choice on a rendered plan.
• Mask (box) puts a solid box behind the text. Unambiguous, but it punches a hole in the drawing.

Both are available on text and leaders alike.

Lettering and Looks

Every look except CAD Line has its own lettering font, and text follows it: hand lettering in the sketch and marker looks, a brush face in watercolor. Three of these faces are installed with the application and travel with it, so a document lettered in them renders the same on any machine.

A title block note, a legal description or a stamp often has to keep its own lettering; check Keep this font in every look. To change the look's lettering for the whole sheet, use VIEW ▸ Look Settings ▸ Lettering.

Missing Fonts

Fonts are silently substituted by the rendering engine if they are not installed, which is a quiet way to ruin a sheet, so Studio makes it visible:

• Loading a document that uses fonts this machine does not have warns once, listing them.
• The Text and Leader tabs show ⚠ Font not installed, shown with a substitute under the family picker.

The font name is preserved in the file either way, so the text renders correctly on a machine that has the font. For documents that will be passed around, pick from the Recommended group or use the bundled hand-lettering faces.

Text from CAD

Text and MText export from the drawing with their content, height, rotation and alignment, and MText formatting codes are stripped to plain text. Imported text takes its layer's color and can be given its own with Override Layer Color. Dimensions and multileaders do not export, so add those labels here with the leader tool.