This is a small program that I wrote that will trace a Font/Dingbat, the name of the program is "Font Tracer".
Since I've started this project I've learned that all fonts are not equal as far as quality goes.
What "Font Tracer" does:
1) Creates an outline/trace of a Font or Dingbat that is loaded on your PC, the font must be installed in your fonts folder (Control Panel / Fonts) before starting "Font Tracer".
2) Resize the outline/trace to a larger size, so that a jpeg image can be saved on your PC.
3) The goal is to create large single pixel lines, that can later be opened with
WinTopo, to create a DXF file.
How to use "Font Tracer".
1) Download the .zip file below, & unzip to your PC.
2) Start "Font Tracer".
3) Select the Font/Dingbat that you want from the list (
Font Selection) of available fonts on your PC.
4) Enter a letter into the textbox below the font selection, the lower case "a" is the default letter when the program first starts up.
5) Adjust the size that you want the font trace/outline to be, 5 is min. 3000 is max. You also have the option to add (
Add Width/Height) to the finished trace/outline, I've added this option because some dingbats can be very large in size. So the actual size on the width & height could be "5000x5000".
6) Press the "Start" button (
Trace Font).
7) To save the image, "
File / Save Image"
Wintopo
1) Wintopo is a free program that can be downloaded from
here, for the Thinning Method in WinTopo I use the "Stentiford" thinning.
2) WinTopo has a single button (One-Touch Vectorisation) to create DXF files (that's all I use), very simple.
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