Font size in DXF export QGIS

Question

I am trying to export our Property layer to DXF but am running into issues with labels. I have tried each of the three ways that I have seen described about DXF export, and none of them work for me.

My issues are

a) Not all the labels are exported with the DXF and

b) Then when I open the file in AutoCAD, the font size is huge.

Neither my AutoCAD expert colleague nor I have been able to make the font size smaller in AutoCAD.

I know the documentation with the DXF export says that labels are not included in the export, but that was some time ago and I have hopes that this situation has changed.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Regarding b), you should be able to modify the label style (and other things) using OGR label style strings specified in an OGR_STYLE field, as described at https://www.gdal.org/ogr_feature_style.html and https://www.gdal.org/drv_dxf.html

(I have not personally done this, I've only dealt with OGR styles during import not export. In particular, I'm not sure how much of the OGR_STYLE mapping happens automatically during export from QGIS desktop vs whether you need to use special parameters with ogr2ogr etc.)

I also recall seeing somewhere that there was inconsistency between OGR drivers in font sizes, where sometimes the font size was the cap height and sometimes the em height, which can be significantly (say 50%) higher. Not sure how "huge" is the mismatch you're experiencing, but something to be aware of.

Answer 2

It turns out that I had two issues.

My original layer was in MapInfo Tab format and that did not export to DXF well. So I converted my file to SHP file, styled it the way I wanted it - with the labels I needed and all was good.

My second issue what that I did not understand the Symbology Scale item in the export process. I had left it at the default of 1:1000000 when I first exported. With a few experiments I found that 1:500 was what I needed.

Thank you to all who read and made suggestions.

Answer 3

You need to check at which scale your labels are visible then select that scale. Also after exporting into DXF the text comes as Mtext format so click on it select similar and then explode that block then you will change the size.