Text missing or mangled in the PDF export

The linework is there but the text is not — or the text is there and the letters are wrong. Those are two different problems with two different causes.

1. The font is missing

If the drawing refers to a typeface you do not have installed — usually an SHX file — the program substitutes another. At best the text looks different; at worst it does not appear at all. Asking whoever sent the drawing for their SHX files is the certain fix; the alternative is switching the style to a TrueType face such as Arial that every machine has.

2. Accented and non-Latin characters

If accented letters or Cyrillic turn into boxes, question marks or nonsense, the problem is encoding. Older DXF versions store text against a code page; a reader that assumes the wrong one mangles the letters. DXF 2007 and later use UTF-8, which largely removes the problem — re-saving in a newer version fixes most cases.

3. Multi-line text collapsing to one line

MTEXT is a block of text: it carries a column width, line spacing, bold and italic runs and an attachment point. A simple reader ignores all of it and prints the content as a single line — title-block notes overrun, and a grid letter escapes its circle. If a long note spills out of its box in the export, this is why.

4. The text layer does not plot

Text usually sits on its own layer. If that layer is off, frozen or flagged not-to-print, it stays on screen and never reaches the PDF. The same trap catches hatches.

Telling whether the text is really text

Open the PDF and search for the project name in the title block (Ctrl/Cmd + F). If it is found, the text is real; if not, the labels are baked into a picture and can no longer be searched or copied. We go into that difference in vector against image PDF.