You receive a drawing from a partner, open it, and the text has the wrong shape, lines of text are shorter, and notes run over the title block. The usual cause is that your machine lacks a font the sender used. The cure is to add fonts to AutoCAD: copy the right font file into the right folder, and copy it before you open the drawing.
This article works through each step in AutoCAD 2027 with the acadiso.dwt template, using a three-line example and a screenshot for each situation. A pack of 75 SHX fonts is available to download at the end. Writing text and creating text styles are covered in text in AutoCAD. For drafting taught properly, the Institute runs an AutoCAD course for construction.
Two kinds of font in AutoCAD
AutoCAD uses two kinds of font, and each text style picks one:
| SHX font | TrueType font | |
|---|---|---|
| File extension | .shx | .ttf |
| Belongs to | AutoCAD alone | Windows, shared by all programs |
| AutoCAD looks in | Its support folders | Fonts installed in Windows |
| Vietnamese accents | romans.shx has none | arial.ttf has them all |
A text style picks its font in the STYLE dialog; the Autodesk documentation on STYLE describes creating, modifying and setting text styles. A drawing does not contain the font file; it records only the font's name. Open the drawing on a machine without a file of that name and the text displays wrongly.
An example: three text styles in one drawing
Create three text styles, one line each, 250 high:
| Text style | Font | Content |
|---|---|---|
IIC_THU | A separate SHX font in an outside folder | ABC 123 ban ve |
SHX_ROMANS | romans.shx | Tiếng Việt: Mặt bằng tầng 1 |
TTF_ARIAL | arial.ttf | Tiếng Việt: Mặt bằng tầng 1 |
The same sentence at the same height of 250 is 5 452 wide in romans.shx but only 4 291 wide in Arial: this SHX font is about 27% wider. So switching a text style from SHX to TrueType shrinks the text, and table cells or note boxes drawn to fit the old text end up with spare room. Change fonts before laying out a sheet, not after. The first line, in the separate SHX font, is 4 075 wide: three different fonts, three different widths for text of the same height.
The second line is the first lesson: romans.shx turns every accented letter into ?, leaving only the plain letters. Read the line's content back and it is still Tiếng Việt: Mặt bằng tầng 1 with every accent. The data is intact; the font simply has no shapes for those letters. Accented text in a drawing should use a TrueType font such as Arial.
Missing fonts in AutoCAD: what replaces them
Save the example drawing, move the font file of the IIC_THU style somewhere else, and reopen the drawing. AutoCAD reports no error; it quietly uses a substitute font. The substitute is set by the FONTALT variable; in 2027 its value is simplex.shx.
The line shrinks by almost a quarter, from 4 075 to 3 119 units. On a real drawing, that is when text slips out of a table cell or lands on other linework. If nobody notices, people assume the drawing has been edited.
The FONTMAP variable points to the font mapping file acad.fmp in the user Support folder. According to Autodesk's About Substitute Fonts page, that file lets you name a separate substitute for each missing font.
Where to copy AutoCAD fonts
AutoCAD looks for SHX fonts along its list of support paths (the Support File Search Path). In AutoCAD 2027 the first entry on that list is the user Support folder:
C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2027\R26.0\enu\supportLater entries include the support and fonts folders inside the AutoCAD installation folder. The user Support folder is the neatest place for added fonts: it heads the list, and your added fonts stay apart from the files in the program folder.
Try exactly that: copy the separate SHX font into the user Support folder as iicthu2.shx, and create a text style that names only the file iicthu2.shx, with no path. AutoCAD finds it at once and the text displays correctly, 4 075 wide: the top line of the second screenshot.
Name the font, not its path
A text style stores the font the way you specify it. The IIC_THU style in the example was given a full path, so the drawing records C:\t9\fonttam\iicthu.shx verbatim. The SHX_ROMANS style was given a name, so it records just romans.shx. On another machine, your local path means nothing. Naming the file, as with iicthu2.shx above, lets any machine that has the font in its Support folder find it.
Copied the font, text still wrong: order is everything
This is where people lose an afternoon. If a drawing was opened while the font was missing, AutoCAD has already chosen a substitute for that name. After that, still in the same running AutoCAD session:
| What was done | Width of the line |
|---|---|
| Open the drawing with the font missing | 3 119, substitute font |
| Copy the font to the Support folder, close and reopen the drawing | Still 3 119 |
Change the style to name only the file, no path, then REGEN | Still 3 119 |
| Put the font file back at its original path, reopen the drawing | Still 3 119 |
Within that session the text does not fix itself. At the same time, a new text style pointing to a copy of the very same font under another name displays correctly. Hence the rule: copy fonts first, open drawings second. When a new set of drawings arrives, ask the sender for the list of fonts and copy them all before opening any file. To add fonts to AutoCAD without surprises, also keep your own list short: every extra font a drawing uses is one more file the next person must have, and one more line that can turn into simplex.shx on their screen.
AutoCAD SHX fonts download: the 75-font pack
The pack below holds 75 .shx files common in construction drawings: fonts such as romans, simplex, txt, isocp, gbenor and gbcbig, plus a number of symbol fonts. Reading the first line of each file shows three kinds, as in the table below.
| Kind (first line of file) | Files | Used for |
|---|---|---|
AutoCAD-86 unifont 1.0 | 41 | Ordinary text fonts, Unicode |
AutoCAD-86 shapes 1.0 and 1.1 | 21 | Older text fonts and symbol fonts |
AutoCAD-86 bigfont 1.0 | 13 | Big fonts for Asian text, used with a main font |
After downloading, unzip it, copy the files in the font-shx folder to the user Support folder as described above, and only then open your drawings. The DOC-TRUOC.txt file in the pack repeats these steps. The pack installs nothing: they are just font files, usable once copied and gone once deleted. If one set of drawings needs only one font, copying that single file is enough; there is no need to copy all 75.
Adding fonts to AutoCAD, step by step
- Do this before opening the drawings that need the fonts.
- Unzip the pack and copy the
.shxfiles to the user Support folder. - Open the drawing. Text should have the right shape; compare the length of a familiar line to be sure.
- For accented Vietnamese text, switch the text style to a TrueType font such as Arial.
- To change the font of many existing texts at once, see editing text in bulk.
Three things often repeated that are not true
| Often repeated | What holds on the 2027 release |
|---|---|
| AutoCAD reports an error when a font is missing | No report; it quietly uses simplex.shx, set by FONTALT |
| Copy the font in and the text is right at once | A drawing opened while the font was missing stays wrong for the running session |
| Question marks in text mean the drawing is damaged | The content still has every accent; the SHX font just has no shapes for them |
Frequently asked questions
Where do I copy fonts to add them to AutoCAD?
Into the user Support folder, the first entry in the Support File Search Path: C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2027\R26.0\enu\support.
Why is the text still wrong after copying the font?
Because the drawing was opened while the font was missing, and AutoCAD keeps using the substitute in the running session. Copy fonts before opening drawings.
Why does Vietnamese text show question marks?
The text style uses an SHX font such as romans.shx, which has no shapes for accented letters. Switch the style to a TrueType font such as Arial.
What does AutoCAD use in place of a missing font?
The font named in the FONTALT variable, simplex.shx in 2027.
Can I test whether an SHX font supports accents?
Write one line of accented Vietnamese text in a style using that font, as in the second line of the example, and look at the result on screen.