Just Can't Make Text Along a Curve Work!

ScottA

Just like the title says, I just cannot make Draw Text Along a Curve work. I'm SURE it's me and something I'm doing -- or NOT doing. I draw the line, select Draw Text Along a Curve, click the little selector box on the line, enter the text... and it comes out upside down! And the first letter is straight like it fell off the front of the text (or rather, the rest of the text fell off and is hanging upside down). I've tried it on the full map and I've tried turning everything off except the background so there were no symbols or polygons to interfere. I've made longer lines, I've changed the lettering size and spacing in the text command box. No matter what I do it still happens. As I've said before, I'm a dumb-dumb when it comes to computer graphics and such, so I know its something I'm doing and not a fault in the program. Help?

Loopysue

I get upside-down text as well, but that's when I draw the line using the arc tool, or I draw it from the wrong end.

If you have a wiggly line, start drawing it from the end you want to be able to read the text from. Using an arc only works if you want to bow the text upwards. You can imitate a downward bowed arc using the curve drawing tool to follow the line of the arc in the direction you want the text to flow.

Letters fall off the end of the curve when the text is too large to be able to fit the label on the curve, so you need to click undo, reduce the size of the font, and try again when that happens.

robotrock

I don't know if this will help, but this is how I learned how to do it and it works. FW to about 7:45 for text along a curve


EDIT: by the time I looked up the video, your question had already been answered :-)

pixelkitteh

I draw the line using the road tool (with the erase after box ticked), haven't had a problem yet. Maybe try using different tools and see if that helps?

Loopysue

Any tool that draws a curve will do - including the ordinary curve tool

ScottA

Ahhhh... okay. I THINK my problem has been that I'm drawing my lines top to bottom when I need to draw them bottom to top? I'm going to go try and will report back later! Thanks so much for the feedback!

ScottA

Yup, that was the problem! Drew my curve bottom to top and presto! Perfect, first time! Such a simple thing! Thanks for the help as always!

Dogtag

ScottA remarked:Ahhhh... okay. I THINK my problem has been that I'm drawing my lines top to bottom when I need to draw them bottom to top? I'm going to go try and will report back later! Thanks so much for the feedback!

Yeah, as Loopysue mentioned earlier, draw the line in the direction the text will read. The text begins at the starting point of the curve and moves to the end point of the curve.

Arcs are funny things and don't always behave like other curves do. One way to use an arc for text is to create a drawing tool for text guide lines. You can use the arc command to draw an arc and then use the Trace feature of the drawing tool to trace the arc perfectly. Then, delete the arc and use the traced curve you drew with the drawing tool as the guide for the text.

If you draw the arc on one layer and have the drawing tool draw on another layer, you can hide the appropriate layer to delete the arc.

Cheers,
~Dogtag