Help with editing/importing glyphs within a font

[missjax1]

I just sent this to tech support, but wanted to post it here in case there was someone that could give me some answers faster.

I am hoping that there is someone that can take some time to help me out. I purchased the business or pro version of all the products, and have been trying to learn how to work with font creator for what seems like forever. I have posted in the forums.. and I am just not finding the information that I need, or steps that make sense to me. Hopefully whomever finds this will be able to take some time to help, because I really need the ability to do these things asap. To give you some reference, I digitize embroidery designs. I am a typeaholic, and use thousands of different fonts to create my designs. However, many fonts have several imperfections, weird jagged lines, are too wide in some places to translate into a pretty stitch, or I will add/draw embellishments to letters to create a custom monogram or set. I purchased all of this software so I could do the editing once, and then use MY versions going forward for digitzing…opposed to a million edits each time I use a font or glyph/element from a font…as well as create fonts with my own lettering and artwork. It has been over 6 months, and I still have no idea how to accomplish what I need this program to do 

• Editing/creating my own font
  I have the basics on how to create a copy of a font, save it, make edits within font creator (although I am very limited with that because I am not familiar with the proper terminology or how to efficiently work with the controls) save those changes - even adding in my information in the properties, and exporting them into TTF.

All the trouble starts when I try to make changes and edits….I would prefer to do the editing in my Vector program (Corel x7) and then import the edited version back into the existing font. I have tried doing this, and then exporting the edited letter or shape into a pdf – and then dragging it over to Font Creator. When I do this - the letter is HUGE, and not placed properly. (off center, baseline is way off, much larger than any of the unedited letters, and often after exporting will not show the whole letter (looking like there are open curves, when they weren’t open in the file that I exported). I also have trouble when I have elements within the letter that overlap (ie a swirl, or intersections pieces of a letter that overlap – it will show as blanked out spots).

Is there a specific size that I should be using when I am making edits to a letter? I am not overly concerned about embellished letters right now, I just would like to know how to work with editing and importing certain letters in a font, my artwork into a font format, and 3rd on the priority list, how to export/import a glyph from one font into another..

Any help with this would be appreciated more than you could possibly understand.

Thanks in advance for any help/detailed instructions you can give me.

I am using font creator 7.50 (build 519)

THANKS SO MUCH!!!
J

[Alfred]

@missjax1

All the trouble starts when I try to make changes and edits….I would prefer to do the editing in my Vector program (Corel x7) and then import the edited version back into the existing font. I have tried doing this, and then exporting the edited letter or shape into a pdf – and then dragging it over to Font Creator. When I do this - the letter is HUGE, and not placed properly. (off center, baseline is way off, much larger than any of the unedited letters, and often after exporting will not show the whole letter (looking like there are open curves, when they weren’t open in the file that I exported).

What is the page size in the PDF document? Maybe it would help if you could attach a sample PDF page here, so that others can see what you’re seeing when you drag the letter or shape into FC7.5.

[Bhikkhu_Pesala]

The Validation Toolbar (F7) may help you to fix the contours that are the wrong direction. Clockwise contours inside other clockwise contours will be black. To make them white, reverse the contour direction.

The size is not really an issue, and it’s easy to resize vectors using the corner handles, or the Scale tab of the Transform Toolbar (F6).

Imported glyphs are positioned with the bottom left corner of the contour at 0,0, which will rarely be the correct baseline of the glyph. Just move it after scaling it.

See this tutorial thread on Importing Vectors

[missjax1]

here is one of the letters that I am having trouble with. It is fine as a vector, i made sure all curves were closed, and then whem I import it into FC - it looks like this. I can’t figure out how to trim the center pieces out of the main letter. Can someone please helps?
capa.pdf (8.2 KB)

[Bhikkhu_Pesala]

@Bhikkhu Pesala

The Validation Toolbar (F7) may help you to fix the contours that are the wrong direction. Clockwise contours inside other clockwise contours will be black. To make them white, reverse the contour direction.

The validation toolbar shows that the problems are caused by intersecting co-ordinates. FontCreator is unable to fix the other errors due to this, but as I said, reverse the contour directions of the black contours. The icon is on the Glyph Toolbar.

In the Pro Edition you can double-click the error in the Validation Toolbar to zoom in to the node that is causing the intersecting co-ordinates problem. Then move the node to fix the error.

After fixing all of the errors, the Validation Tooblar can recognised the incorrect contour direction errors, which it can then fix. However, you can do this from the glyph toolbar in the Home Edition, and move the nodes to stop contours crossing over themselves.

[ErwinDenissen]

@missjax1

I just sent this to tech support, but wanted to post it here in case there was someone that could give me some answers faster.

I’m sorry but we didn’t receive your support question. Did you send an email to us, or did you use our ticket system?

@missjax1

All the trouble starts when I try to make changes and edits….I would prefer to do the editing in my Vector program (Corel x7) and then import the edited version back into the existing font. I have tried doing this, and then exporting the edited letter or shape into a pdf – and then dragging it over to Font Creator. When I do this - the letter is HUGE.

It might help if you recalculate the default scale factor. You can do this through the Options dialog, as mentioned in the manual:
FontCreator Manual → Options → Glyph → Import Vector Based Images