Bending a font but keep verticals vertical

I’ve got a project in Solidworks that requires a custon name to be on an angle, so the horizontal edges of each letter are on an angle, but the verticals of each letter remain vertical. The word starts at about 8 o’clock and ends at 2 o’clock.


I’ve managed to get around it by using the italic of a font and playing with angles so the verticals are vertical, but it won’t work with longer words (steeper angle) and every fonts italic is at a slightly different angle.

Is there a way to do this with any font? Can you adjust the ‘lean’ of an italic? I’m thinking in Illustrator or similar, but I have no idea.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

What you’re looking for is called “Shear”-ing, it is in Illustrator under the standard object transformations.

Yep. Transform>Shear then import the text into SW.

Cheers, It works a treat in Illustrator CS2, but SolidWorks only imports illustrator files from CS3 onwards.
I will get me some new Illustrator.

Save as a DXF

DXF will make all the curves segments. Opt for AI files, if you can.

Solidworks can’t Shear? Surely it can…that’s how objects get rotated in 3D, it’s actually a combination of shearing and scaling.

Also easily done in rhino, should you have that.

Agree with holtag-

Preferred workflow.
Create Text/ Graphic in Illustrator
Open the ai or pdf in Rhino-
Multiple commands could do what you want- Cage Edits, Shear etc: ( the curve conversions are much cleaner in Rhino)
Extrude
Export as iges or Rhino3 .3dm which can be imported directly into

Solidworks/Illustrator Only Workflow.
Shear in Illustrator
Save as a dwg
In Solidworks: Tools>Block>Insert Block- which can use the dwg as a block. To scale visually click on the sketch in the history tree (when you are out of the sketcher) and move/scale visually with the dragger

Cheers, that works, but I’m doing something wrong in Illustrator as the text is coming through massive and I have to scale it down a lot. Shear text in SolidWorks would be great to have.

Also, I saved some text as an .AI file in Illustrator CS3 on a friends computer, but my SolidWorks wouldn’t touch it- you need the right version of Illustrator installed on the same computer your SolidWorks is on.

Ctrl-j

Not unconnected segments, but a series of straight lines to make up a curve. Illustrator has no capacity to convert Bézier curves to Arcs/Lines. If someone could write a plugin for that, they’d make a fortune.

There has got to be some sort of disconnect. Maybe it is a SW thing, I let our CAD guy run that

In Illustrator, when I export as a dfx and then open in Rhino, curves are curves, not a series of straight lines, and they are joined.

In Rhino, when I save as a dfx and then re-open in Rhino, the previously joined lines and curves and unjoined, hence my Ctrl-j comment.