OpenSCAD Bitmap Fonts Module by tbuser

OpenSCAD Bitmap Fonts Module

tbuser

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Published on March 24, 2010

Description

Update: Added height map support

This is an OpenSCAD module that let's you easily (well kinda) create 3D text. I've emulated the Atari 8-Bit fonts A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and most punctuation. You can create them a letter at a time or pass an array of characters. (OpenSCAD doesn't have any real string manipulation)

It also has a bitmap module that you can use to define your own fonts. It's pretty simple, you pass it an array of numbers (the number defines the height modifier, so a height of 5 and a value in array of 2 would make that pixel 10mm high), then tell it how many bits per row and it creates cubes (of configurable width and height) in a grid and combines them into a single shape.

Be careful when defining your own bitmaps in that you can't have two bits only connected diagonally. Otherwise OpenSCAD will say it's not manifold. For instance you can't have:

But you can have:

I'll try to keep this up to date, but you can always find the latest version on github at github.com/tbuser/openscad-bitmap

Instructions

For examples see:

Parametric Name Tag:
thingiverse.com/thing:2055

Parametric Alphabet Block:
thingiverse.com/thing:2056

OpenSCAD Height Map:
thingiverse.com/thing:2070

Include bitmap.scad:

Create the letter "A" where each bit is a 2mm cube (8 x 8 so 16mm total wide) and 5mm high:

block_size = 2;
height = 5;

8bit_char("A", 2, 5);

Create the string "MakerBot". OpenSCAD has no real string or length methods :( so you have to define each character in an array and pass the number of characters:

chars = ["M","a","k","e","r","B","o","t"];
char_count = 8;

8bit_str(chars, char_count, block_size, height);