Allegro reference designator's text size

You've probably found it by now: Edit->Change and then under the options tab you can choose another text size.

To edit the text sizes be sure to be in an idle state and then setup->text sizes

Hi damian_s.
Do You want change Reference text size?
Using>>
1. Menu>>> setup - textsize click
2. text setup window
1> finde designed the text block number
text block check by show element
2> using text block change width,height
line space,photo width,char space.
change value of do you want?
3. color and visibility window
1> all invisible
2> components group change
Ref Des section all visible.

4. Menu>> Edit- change click
1>control panel
text check of find tab
text block change of opinons tab

so you want text size of this brd.

regard.

Thank you for your reply. I've try it and it works.

How to setup the font sizes in Allegro?

Here are a bit more clear instructions:

1. From the menu click SETUP

2. Select Design Parameters...

3. Select the tab "Text"

4. Inside the "Size" box, click on the button Setup Text Sizes  [...]

5. A table opens.  The header of the table is:
    Text Blk        Width      Height       Line Space       Photo Width        Char Space

where:

Text Blk: is the nickname of the font, as you will call it from the Edit ==> Change ==> Text Block

Width: is the width of the font (for example the distance between the branches of a wide letter like capital W at its top, when the stroke has zero thickness -- see later "Photo Width")

Height: is the height of a full size letter (for example W, when the stroke has zero thickness).

Line Space: is the vertical distance between two lines.  It is not really used, it is the recommended spacing when you place two text lines one under the other.

Photo Width: this is the thickness of the pen used to draw this fonts (or in gerbers), or sometimes also called stroke thickness. The larger the number the thicker is the pen.  You need to use something proportional to make it look good.   Using a very thin line will make it hard to read. If you assign ZERO, the PCB fabricator will default them to min width they can process.  If you want to have good control, make sure you actually define the a usable value.

Char Space: is the space between two adjacent characters in the same line, for example two letters WW -- the space between the top branches.

Notes:

1. Example of a good set of Block Settings to ensure a proportional fonts.  The units below are um (thousands of a mm).  I use um lately since all my boards are metric and really dense, so I do not need to use decimal numbers.  For those who can't think in meters: 1mil = 25.4um.  Or divide by 25.4 the numbers in the table and you get mils.

The smallest Photo Width used above is 100um (about 4 mils).  That is why the smallest fonts (Blk 1) look drawn with a too thick pen.

2. The "fonts" generated by Allegro are not really fonts in the sense of the fonts used in documents. Allegro generates them using polygonal lines because photo plotters historically could only understand such commands.  Unfortunately, when you generate PDF documents from Allegro screens, the text will not be real text and you will not be able to search for it, unless you work hard to pass it through an OCR.

Hope this helps!