I am trying to put engraved text onto the outside of a solid cylinder.
Nothing I have found will bend the text then apply it to the surface.
Is there a tutorial available?

Using ViaCadpro v7.

Yes, VCP has a text along a curve function.

Thanks for the tip:). However, it doesn't quite operate correctly. I have attached a ViacaPro V7 file to show the results so far.

The text Font is not correct (Times New Roman) and cannot be moved to a different location (or re-sized) on the curved surface

Thanks for the tip! :)

However, the font (times new roman) cannot be moved up the cylinder where it needs to be for engraving.

Also, once the VCP file is exported to .dxf or .stl, the resultant 3d surface has lost the text. :confused:

Could not attach files this time--upload error...

I see what you mean. The extrude doesn't work with the text along curve. Tim doesn't the text get stretch with your approach in the video taking into account the perimeter of the curve.

Very good Tim, unfortunately we cannot save your QuickTime movie!

Tim, I have not been able to complete all the steps properly as shown in your video.
The extrusion of the font text always drops out some of the characters (like punctuation, for instance).

See attached file for an example of what extruded text looks like.The letter "r" and the exclamation points will not extrude.

The font used was "vani", but similar problems problem occur on most other fonts also:confused:

What do you expect? .....this solution...

Months ago, this is what I was attempting to do when attaching text to a compound surface that is the bow of a ship. I figured out (eventually, the hard way) that I couldn't get text onto the surface (easily?), so I thickened the surface. ( Then, I made text and extruded it, then split it from the solid of the ship's shell plating. The text had some excess size so I could move it and a guide surface onto the shell plating and split it. This gave a "raised" surface effect. However, it was problematic, and I eventually gave up when a co-worker commented that for labor costs, today, most ships' names are just painted on the surface, and no expensive bead welding is raised to be painted.

IIRC, later I "projected" text to a surface and treated it as a banner. But, IIRC, surfaces I was dealing with had too many intervening curves embedded, and the spread of letters always landed inconveniently on a curve. So, making extruded text become split was painful because the intervening curves did strange and wholly undesired things to the text. Now that I've been experimenting with curve and surface quality settings, in Freeship, I may have removed unwanted curves that would otherwise appear after turning the mesh into a surface. Now, I just use much finer and appropriately-spaced stations, and I hope I'll get letters of the right spacing on those surfaces.

Still, it would be nice if one could stencil text onto a surface (whereby VCP/Shark would make a "text background base" that is not ravaged by embedded mesh or surface facet curves, and that base follow the models' curvature, so the text is smooth...), with the intent to have 'banners" like on model trains, planes, ships, cars, etc, set a reasonable amount of curvature lifting from the surface, and, and, AND, be able to rename it easily, in the event of spelling error or renaming airplanes or ships to make multiples of a same class or family/production line for display purposes.

Part of the problems I had, as others pointed out, involved punctuation and certain letters and certain fonts failing to project or extrude.