Hi. I'm wanting to make or have made plaques that will include numbers and letters. I have no idea how I can create an engineering drawing using a font.

A potential supplier today sent me, in a PDF file, some artwork, a nice large picture of a plaque with a number inside it. Not only that, but is an outline of a number, not solid, which is what I want.

Can anyone please tell me how can I produce something like I got sent to me?

I've got Gimp, but perhaps I need a proper CAD program?

Your help much appreciated. Thanks.

I don't understand wath you want to make : an engineering drawing or an image ?

For an engineering drawing, you need a CAD software like AutoCAD. All the recent CAD siftware can use the TTF font.

If you want just an image with an artwork and some figures and lettering, you need a graphic software.
The GIMP is one, but it's a bitmap software, and I think that for your application, a vectoral editor like Inkscape (free software) is besser.

For the hollow lettering, it existe many fonts that pupose directly hollow charactèrs.
For example
http://www.dafont.com/fr/gobold.font?fpp=50&af=on
http://www.dafont.com/fr/iconian-fonts.d6?fpp=50&af=on

Hi. Yep, because it's an engineered thing, I'm thinking in terms of supplying an engineering drawing like what you would make with a CAD program. I asked the guy what he is using and he said Coral Draw and Photoshop, both graphics programs. So, given it's simplicity, a graphics program is obviously adequate.

I downloaded a free copy of Cora Draw. Merely a matter of drawing a rectangle and then typing in a character and scaling the character. Got that far, but still not got just the outline yet.

Not sure if I can get an outline from Coral Draw with any font, or whether it needs to be an outline font from the start.

Aah, in Coral Draw you use select your text and then use Converted to Curves (Ctl + Q). Then in the Object Properties menu, under Outline, select line thickness, etc, and under Fill, select no fill.

So, I have my answer. At least for a certain graphics program.