Polymaker has made a collection of fonts for openSCAD available. There are 586 fonts in the collection of which just over 200 are marked as working. Here is openSCAD code to make samples of the fonts and check to see how they print. I've tried to make the code general enough so that it is easy to make the change from one font to another.

A spherical surface was chosen as it is an easy way to present the letters in a variety of orientations. The openSCAD programs write the letters on the upper half of a sphere.

I wanted to show text written on the inside of the sphere and so a second verson contains a hole to make a container. Some of the text was moved to the top of the container so that all of the symbols could still be shown. The image at the left shows a sphere with the PT_Sans_Web_Regular font and a container with the OpenSans_Regular font.

The letters of the alphabet, small and capital, and the numbers from 0 through 9, for a total of 62 charaters, appear on the sphere. Other symbols were not checked. As I tried the fonts I found errors of two types: one - the letters were missing parts, and two - a letter or number was not a valid 2 manifold. Letters which were not valid 2 manifolds had to be removed before a font sphere could be formed. I checked 12 fonts, half of which had at least one error. See table below.

One can imagine other uses for this code. Three line poetry could take the place of the fonts. The container could be used to hold small objects. I've been told that the open sphere is perfectly sized for a miniature hampster home.

Four scad files, ideally in the same directory, are required to make a font sphere. Two are font files, available from thing:13677. The font file GiveYouGlory.scad was used to check writing on the interior of the sphere and is always included. Required as well is the font file to be printed. A letter file, different for each font, is needed and finally the executable, for example Pt_Sans_Web_Regular_sphere.scad or Open_Sans_Regular_container.scad, must be present.

Letter files contain 62 modules, one for each letter of the alphabet and one for each numeral. They differ only in that they call different font files. A change from one font to another can be made with an editor using a single global change command. This allows the executable to move from font to font by changing only two lines of code, two include statements. Near the beginning of the executables are parameters that,
depending on the size of the font, can be changed to make the font fit the sphere. Comments added to the executables might make this clearer.

The stl files included here are at a scale of 0.8 and take about two and a half hours to print. Full versions print in just under 5 hours.

The full printed versions of the font samplers are handsome objects but a lot of useful information comes from the stl file alone. If an stl file forms there are no manifold errors. As the characters are written in alphabetical order it takes only a moment to see if all the letters are OK. I've tried to make it easy to contruct the stl files; for now a good editor and a global command to change the font name in the letters file is required. Perhaps someone can suggest an easier way.

Sampled Fonts

Amaranth_Bold . . . . . . . . . . forms stl - M,N,W parts missing
Anton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . no stl - 6 gives 2 manifold
Cabin_Regular . . . . . . . . . . OK
Crushed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . forms stl - B part missing
ExpletusSans_Regular . . . . no stl - 3 gives 2 manifold error
GiveYouGlory . . . . . . . . . . . . . OK
GlobinOne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OK a large font
GochiHand_Regular . . . . . . . no stl - k gives 2 manifold error
OpenSans_Italic . . . . . . . . . OK
OpenSans_Regular . . . . . . OK
OpenSans_Semibold . . . . . forms stl - V,1 parts missing
Pt_Sans_Web_Regular . . . . OK

• stl file and letter file provided