Hebrew fonts for AutoCAD, which to download and how to install them

Check your drawing for free: you'll see how its labels look repaired, and which fonts its Hebrew was typed in, in case you'd still rather get the font. The plugin that repairs the drawing is coming soon, and the waiting list is how we'll let you know.

Where to get the font

The safest source is whoever sent the drawing. The ETRANSMIT command packs a drawing together with its fonts, and if it misses an unusual font, ask for the .shx file itself.

Plenty of sites offer packs of Hebrew fonts to download, but the same name does not mean the same font. Several different Hebrew fonts share one file name with a different encoding, and a hebrew.shx from some site may draw the wrong letters. The most common ones in the drawings we checked are miryl, mirym, hebtxt, sivan_m, techno_m and gil, and the guide to Hebrew .shx fonts covers each.

How to install an .shx font

For one drawing: put the file in the same folder as the drawing and open the drawing again. AutoCAD looks there first, so the sender's font wins even if you have a different font with the same name.

For every drawing:

1. Make a folder for fonts, for example C:\CAD\Fonts, and copy the .shx files into it.
2. Type OPTIONS, and on the Files tab open Support File Search Path.
3. Click Add, then Browse, and pick the folder.
4. Close AutoCAD and open it again.

It works the same in every version, from 2017 and 2018 to today, and needs no administrator rights.

What you see, and what the drawing really holds

Hebrew .shx fonts were made before AutoCAD had real Hebrew support, and each worked around that in its own way. The drawing stores one thing and the font draws another. When the font is missing, AutoCAD shows what is actually stored. There are three ways this happened, and each looks different:

The last column counts the broken labels of each kind in real client drawings we tested. Most broken Hebrew is stored as English letters or as symbols; little of it is reversed.

How to tell which one you have

1. Select a broken label and type LIST, or open Properties with Ctrl+1.
2. The Text line (Contents in Properties) shows what is really stored: lowercase English letters, symbols, or reversed Hebrew.
3. The font's name is in the text style (STYLE), and in the window AutoCAD opens when .shx files are missing.

Why a font is not a fix

Even when the Hebrew is back on screen, the drawing still holds jsr rjmv. The font only draws it differently, so:

• Anyone who gets the drawing without the font sees it broken: the next consultant, the contractor, the client.
• Searching for a Hebrew word with FIND will not find the label.
• Copying the label into Word, Excel or an email pastes jsr rjmv, and so does any data extraction from the drawing, room names into a table for example.
• Switching the style to Arial or any other ordinary font exposes what is stored. Autodesk recommends moving to a Hebrew TrueType font, which is right for text you type from now on. It does nothing for labels already in the drawing.

Fixing the text itself

The real fix is to turn what is stored into Hebrew letters and move it to a font every computer has. By hand there is no shortcut: every label is rewritten, and one drawing we tested had 4,562 of them. That is why most offices just swap the font, and the damage stays inside the file.

Gibberish's repair does it for the whole drawing at once. It recognizes which of the three ways each label was written, rewrites it as real Hebrew and leaves it exactly where it was. The plugin that runs it from inside AutoCAD is coming soon. Join the waiting list and we'll let you know when you can download it. You can already check a whole drawing for free and see some of its labels before and after the repair, or decode single labels.

By default the labels move to a thin font that ships with Windows and opens correctly on any computer. An office that prefers its own .shx font will be able to keep it instead, on the condition that everyone who opens the drawing has that font too.