Engraving

Engrave Ring

Engrave Ring wraps text around a ring at a given finger size. A date, a name, a couple of initials, a hallmark — the part of a wedding ring nobody sees and everybody remembers.

It does not need a curve, a band or a selection: the command builds its own circle from the ring size you choose and flows the lettering along it. That is what makes it different from the general text-on-curve tool — you set a size, not a path.

Size

The Size section sets the finger size the text is laid on, in the sizing standard you work in. That size defines the diameter of the circle the letters follow, so it is the first thing to get right: engrave at the finished size of the band and the lettering lands where the inner wall is.

Changing the size rebuilds the text around the new circle immediately.

Positioning the text around the ring

A rotation gumball appears in the viewport, around the ring axis. Drag it to turn the whole engraving around the band — to bring the text away from the seam, or to centre it under the setting. The angle you leave it at is saved with the engraving.

Parameters

• Text: What gets engraved. Type it and the preview updates as you go.
• Font: Four script and display faces are supplied with RhinoArtisan — Bienchen, Discipuli Britannica, Helvetia Verbundene and Sacramento — followed by every font installed on your machine. The supplied four are single-stroke or lightly-weighted faces chosen because they engrave well; a heavy system font will not.
• Style: Regular, Bold or Italic.
• Horizontal alignment: Where the text sits along the circle — Left, Center, Right or Justify.
• Vertical alignment: How the lettering is anchored across its own height — Top, Center or Bottom.
• Height: The cap height of the letters, in millimetres. On the inside of a band this is usually well under 2 mm.
• Spacing: The gap between letters. Opening it up is often what makes a long inscription fit and stay readable.
• Thickness: How far the letters are extruded off the circle. Left at zero you get flat lettering — the outlines and no solid. Give it a value and the text becomes a solid you can boolean into or out of the band.
• Text flip horizontal and Text flip vertical: Two toggle buttons that mirror the lettering. Text laid on a ring reads one way from the outside and the other way from the inside; these are how you make it read correctly on the face you are engraving.

What it creates

Accept bakes the engraving as a single group: the letter solids on your metal layer and the letter outlines on your user layer. The group appears in the Outliner as Engrave Ring.

From there it is geometry like any other. Give the text a thickness and boolean it out of the band for a cut inscription, or into it for a raised one; leave it flat and use the curves as a path for engraving or laser marking.

Save defaults in the panel header stores the current font, style, height, spacing and alignment as your starting point for the next engraving. Right-click the same button to clear them.