Text & Fonts

The Font control is the shared searchable picker from the Font Manager: it opens with your pinned fonts and last ten used, and typing searches every font installed on your machine, every OTF/TTF you've imported into the JetCad3 library, and the whole downloadable jetcad.io catalog — picking a family you don't have yet downloads it on the spot. JetCad3 parses the actual outline data from the font file, not a rasterized stand-in. The ↑/↓ arrow keys still cycle font families with the preview updating live, and your last-used font, text, height, and output mode are all remembered for next time.

Beside the font picker sit a B and an I toggle — flip either (or both) to get Bold, Italic, or Bold Italic. These always switch to the font's own bold and italic faces, so the letters keep the exact shape the type designer drew — nothing is artificially slanted or thickened, which matters when the text becomes a cut or engrave path. If the current font doesn't ship a bold or italic style, that button is greyed out with a note telling you which style is missing. Switch to another font family with Bold on and it stays bold whenever that family has a bold face.

• Spline — every Bezier segment of each glyph becomes an exact B-spline. Zero approximation error; this is the default.
• Polyline (arc-fitted) — glyphs are tessellated, then refit to straight lines plus true circular arcs, so curves stay arcs instead of hundreds of tiny line segments — and flat glyph edges are guaranteed to stay straight lines, never absorbed into an arc.
• Polyline (line segments) — straight chords only, spaced to your tolerance.
• Lines, Arcs & Circles — arc-fitted, then exploded into individual line and arc entities.

The non-spline modes expose a Tolerance field (default 0.0001) that caps the maximum deviation from the true glyph outline.

A Layout selector at the top of the panel lays the same text out Straight, on an Arc, or around a Circle — including a top+bottom badge for seals and logos, and a Pick arc/circle button to snap the text onto geometry you've already drawn. The letters are rotated onto the curve, never distorted. See Text on Arcs & Circles for the full rundown.

Committed text lands as a single group: click any letter and the whole string selects, so you can move, scale, or rotate it as one unit with Manipulate. Right-click the text and choose Edit Text… to re-open the dialog and change the wording, font, height, or layout — it regenerates in place, and everything it needs is saved with the project so re-editing survives save, reload, and undo.