What’s your standard font height and type?

What is the standard font height and type?

by Edwin Prakoso 

 

Earlier, we discussed how you can install additional fonts to AutoCAD.
Another common question about AutoCAD fonts or drawing lettering are: what’s the default font type and what’s the font height? There are many standards (and many also said there is no standard) that you can use.



The bottom line is the text must be legible. Not too small and not too big so it will not interfere other objects.
Let’s see the common practice for engineering drawing lettering.

Standard Font Height

Height – 1/8″ is common (1/4″ for titles etc.)
Upper & Lower Case – Engineering lettering is commonly upper case CAPITALS

source: http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rbavis/lettering.htm
1/8″ is common text height (equal to 3mm in metric) and 1/4″ is used for titles. You can find this height is consistent in many resources.
Remember, this is the text height on paper. If you work with AutoCAD, you need to set the correct height for your plot scale. Or use AutoCAD annotation scaling.

Standard Font Type

I usually just use Technic or Simplex font. But according to ANSI/ASME standard, the default font type is ASME Y14.5M.
Below is the font type. It looks very neat and very legible to me.

image: http://www.fontspace.com
If you want to download this font, you can download it on FontSpace here. It’s licensed as public domain and commercial use is allowed.

What’s your standard font height and type?

I’ve never used ASME Y14.5M font, and I usually use 2.5mm as my text height. Not by my choice, but it was my company standard. We use Technic. And we also use Architxt for our fancy texts. I think 1/8″ standard was to make it easy using lettering guides.

image: http://www.eckersleys.com.au
But when working with CAD, it’s easy to create smaller letters than 1/8″. The problem is it still must be legible.
I believe many of you also use different standards. What is your standard?