Learn/Drafting/Dimensions, Text & Annotation
Text on Arc
At a glance
- Right-click any text group → Text on Arc…
- Curves text along any arc or circle already in the sketch
- Controls: radius, center, start angle, inside or outside baseline
- Each character is individually repositioned — glyph geometry is never distorted
- Perfect for curved part labels, ring engravings, and logo work
Right-click any text group in a sketch and choose Text on Arc… to curve the string around an arc or circle. Each character is rigidly rotated and repositioned onto the arc — the glyph outlines themselves are never bent or stretched, so the geometry you cut is exactly what the font drew.
Setting the arc
The dialog opens with a sensible starting arc — centered below the text, radius 1.5× the text width, string centered at the top — and the blue preview updates live as you adjust:
- Pick Arc/Circle — hover an existing arc or circle in the sketch and click; its radius and center copy straight in. This is the move for wrapping a label around a bolt circle or ring you've already drawn.
- Radius and Center X/Y — or type exact values instead.
- Start Angle (°) — where the middle of the string sits on the circle; 90° is the top.
- Baseline outside arc — checked, the characters stand on the outside of the arc and read across the top; unchecked, the baseline sits inside for text that reads around the bottom of a ring.
How characters land
Each character's advance width is unrolled along the circumference, so letter spacing is preserved exactly as the font intended — tight radii fan the letters naturally instead of squashing them. Because the tool needs per-character anchor metadata, it works on groups placed by the Text tool; Apply commits the move and updates those anchors to their new positions.