Copyright and Trademark Symbols

AutoCAD has the ability to create exponential text values with Mtext using the carat (^) character. Simply add before or after the text you wish to stack and highlight and right-click. What about special characters including registration, trademark and copyright as shown in Figure 1?

Figure 1: Special Characters

 Last week I came across a drawing file that used Trademark and the Copyright symbol within mtext. The problem was the user created two separate pieces of text instead of taking advantage of AutoCAD’s special characters and stacked text function. Let’s take a look at how this can be done. Figure 2 shows the Autodesk name with the registered trademark symbols next to it in one piece of text.

Figure 2: AutoCAD Mtext Object

Let’s type Mtext and add the word AutoCAD as shown in Figure 2 above. When you are at the end of the last letter perform a right-click to bring up the shortcut menu as shown in Figure3 below.  Select Symbol – Other – as shown.

Figure 3: Right-click menu

The next image you are going to see is the special character map (Figure 4) which will give you the ability to visually see and insert those special characters into your piece of text. We are now going to follow 5 simple steps to get what we need.

1. Find the symbol you are looking for (Registered Trademark).
2. Select the Symbol.
3. Copy the Symbol.
4. Get out of the Character Map
5. Paste the character into your text string

Figure 4: Special Characters Map

 Figure 5: Paste into the Mtext object

All looks good as shown in Figure 6. We have our symbol in there but we still need to superscript that symbol placing it just to the top of the text. Using the Multiline text editor add and the carat (shift+6) just following the special character as shown below.

Figure 6: Symbol add – Place carat

Next, left click, drag, and highlight the registered trademark symbol and the carat, then right-click to view the shortcut menu as shown in Figure 7. From the shortcut menu select STACK. This will stack the symbol just above the AutoCAD piece of text.  You can do the same for superscript just place the carat in front of the symbol and follow the same procedure.

Figure 7: Stack menu

To have additional control over the stacking features, simply select the stacked text and right-click again. From the shortcut menu and select Properties. TheStack Properties window will appear as shown in Figure 8. You can now control the appearance as well as the position of your stacked special character.

Figure 8: Stack Properties dialog box

Keep those Mtext Objects together by using special characters, take a look at all of the symbols in the character map. You may be surprised at what you find. This stacking technique does not work with text created by the commands TEXT, DTEXT or RTEXT, just MTEXT.

Note: As a reminder for those Microsoft word users you can add special characters in word by using the following keyboard shortcuts.

In Microsoft Word the following keyboard shortcuts will insert special characters:

Copyright Symbol: Alt + Ctrl + C

 Trademark Symbol: Alt + Ctrl + T

 Registered Trademark Symbol: Alt + Ctrl + R

If Autocorrect is turned on (which it is by default), you can enter the following text and Word will automatically convert it to the desired symbol:

Copyright Symbol: (c)

 Trademark Symbol: ™

 Registered Trademark Symbol: (r)