Comparing performance of SHX and TTF text fonts



There is no longer a recommendation for using the simplest SHX font to quickly display texts in AutoCAD DWG drawings - i.e. the Txt.shx font. With the help of our new freeware utility CMDtimer - see the tip - we have compared performance of regeneration of a drawing containing an extensive text array containing a total of about 210,000 words.

This comparison has brought quite surprising results - with the super simple font Txt.shx, it took about 0.7 sec to regenerate this test drawing, while with the TrueType font Arial.ttf it took a mere 0.5 sec. This value has not changed even when we tried to "disturb" the TrueType fonts by setting a nonstandard font width factor/oblique angle. SHX fonts contain significantly fewer vectors, but they are displayed directly by AutoCAD, whereas TrueType fonts are displayed by the Windows graphical engine according to AutoCAD requirements.

Specific results will, of course, depend on the CPU speed, video card performance, screen resolution, zoom level, memory performance, probably also on the AutoCAD version, but victory of the TrueType TTF fonts will not be affected. So do trust the default Text Style settings in the AutoCAD DWT template - the preset TrueType font is not only nicer but also faster than older SHX fonts.

Specification of the test PC: HP Z240, i7-6700 3.4GHz, 32GB RAM, nVidia K620, Win10, AutoCAD 2019

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