Number plates on Excel spreadsheets

[RANGERS]

I’m sure somebody must know this so to save me some maths and probably a lot of paper working through trial and error, does anyone know the row height and column width of the cell to produce 4mm number plates when printing to A4?

[melmerby]

Surely the font size has to be taken into consideration as well? The same cell size could have e.g. 10pt or 12pt.

[phil_sutters]

My guess is that you will need a very small font size for 1/76th number plates.  Why not try typing out the number(s) you want in several font sizes from say 2pt to 5pt and see what fits your plates. I would use Ariel, but there are other options, if that doesn't look right. Ariel comes with bold and narrow options.

[DCB]

I haven't done any road vehicle numberplates  only loco front number plates but with letters just over 1mm high.. You are unlikely to have a photo quality printer good enough to print them in 00 scale.  I believe Numbers and letters  must be exactly 79mm tall and 14mm thick, with a space of 11mm between them and 13mm  between the 2 letters and 3 numbers. Some sources say characters except 1 and I are 2" wide.   The square O /0  is the real awkward character to get right. Might be best to avoid 0/O and M    One might need to use numbers from one font and letters from another.  Faststone gives around a 6 to 100 point size unlike most word processing software, and an almost seamless enlarge and reduce facility

I'm just changing the numbers on my 12"/ ft  trailers number plate hence recent research..

I get my loco front plates done as photographs in Tesco or Boots the Chemist after drawing them in Faststone image viewer.

I input the characters by cutting and pasting from a word document 

Edited September 15, 2022 by DCB

[BachelorBoy]

Ariel is wrong, and will look wrong.

 

This free typeface would be better (the original lettering for the plates was produced by a company called Charles Wright)

 

https://www.wfonts.com/font/charles-wright

 

NB this is best for number plates from the past 20 years. It's actually a little condensed compared to the 1930s version, but it will probably be close enough for most models. You always expand it a little in Word, Photoshop, etc.

 

 

 

Some more information on number plate fonts in the UK (and many other countries) here

https://www.leewardpro.com/articles/licplatefonts/licplate-fonts-eur-2.html

Edited September 16, 2022 by BachelorBoy
added website with more details

[simonmcp]

It would be better to produce them in a Vector Drawing program like Illustrator as then you could specify the exact size.

[Steadfast]

Here's the sizes of standard UK plates, and I thoroughly recommend the font suggested by @BachelorBoy

https://hillsnumberplates.com/numberplate-size-guide/

 

If you prefere to use something from the Office suite rather than graphics software, I'd suggest Word rather than excel. Draw a box, you can specify the size to fraction of a mm. The either add text to the box, or add a transparent text box over the top. In Word you are not restricted by the font sizes on the the drop down, you can type any value in there, including decimal points.

 

14 hours ago, DCB said:

I haven't done any road vehicle numberplates  only loco front number plates but with letters just over 1mm high.. You are unlikely to have a photo quality printer good enough to print them in 00 scale. 

Really? My 30 quid HP all in one would easily print legible 1:76 number plates.

 

Jo

[DCB]

2 hours ago, Steadfast said:

Really? My 30 quid HP all in one would easily print legible 1:76 number plates.

Jo

My 30 quid HP all in one won't print 3 point.  That's the size of 00 scale number plates  1/76ths of 79mm is very near 1mm which is 3 point    GWR Loco numberplates are almost 6" high which is 6 point and my HP won't do those very well either,

[Steadfast]

1 hour ago, DCB said:

My 30 quid HP all in one won't print 3 point.  That's the size of 00 scale number plates  1/76ths of 79mm is very near 1mm which is 3 point    GWR Loco numberplates are almost 6" high which is 6 point and my HP won't do those very well either,

Some inspiration. N scale number plate, printed several years ago. Printed on ink jet waterslide paper. Usually use the glossy paper or photo paper setting. All decals, including the grey Actros logo above the grill, printed on a cheap HP all in one.

 

For white text on black background it helps to make the text bolder than required, to allow for the slight bleed of the black ink.

 

Jo

Edited September 15, 2022 by Steadfast

[Ragtag]

Charles Wright 1935 is the font, I use MS Word at 3.5pts and it seems to scale out correctly

[melmerby]

19 hours ago, DCB said:

My 30 quid HP all in one won't print 3 point.  That's the size of 00 scale number plates  1/76ths of 79mm is very near 1mm which is 3 point    GWR Loco numberplates are almost 6" high which is 6 point and my HP won't do those very well either,

Just tried a 3pt numberplate on my £30 Epson, using Libre Ofiice writer and even with a cartridge showing "ink out" and cheap 80gms copier paper it was just readable.

On some decent matt photo paper with a full cartridge it should be OK.