This purpose of this font is to show how to approximate brick diagonals for making 45º angles.

While working on my "Alex Murphy Dings" font of OCP Logos,

Alex Murphy Dings

I, too, came upon the problem of trying to maintain the proper thickness while using 45º angles. This is where math — especially the Pythagorean Theorem — is your friend.

For a brick 1 unit long by 1 unit high, the diagonal length is 1.414 units long. So, to get a diagonal that is 1 unit in length (to match the brick height), the brick itself must be 0.7071 units long by 0.7071units high. Unfortunately, there is no 0.71 scale brick in FontStruct; everything is set to a 1-unit scale. However, we DO have a brick that has a diagonal length of 1.06 units, which is quite close to 1 unit!

I refer to them as diagonal units in the accompanying pictures:
1/4 Angle Brick = 0.35 --> "0.25" diagonal units
1/2 Angle Brick = 0.71 --> "0.50" diagonal units
3/4 Angle Brick = 1.06 --> "0.75" diagonal units
1 Full Brick = 1.414 --> "1.00" diagonal units


All you have to do is:
(1) Divide the Brick Height by 1.414 (the square root of 2)
(2) Round to the nearest 0.25; this gives you the "diagonal unit"
(3) Add the bricks listed above until they total the desired diagonal unit!


Here is a list of the first 10 Brick Heights and their corresponding Diagonal Units:
01 Brick High = 0.71 --> "0.75" Diagonal Units
02 Bricks High = 1.41 --> "1.50" Diagonal Units
03 Bricks High = 2.12 --> "2.00" Diagonal Units
04 Bricks High = 2.83 --> "2.75" Diagonal Units
05 Bricks High = 3.54 --> "3.50" Diagonal Units
06 Bricks High = 4.24 --> "4.25" Diagonal Units
07 Bricks High = 4.95 --> "5.00" Diagonal Units
08 Bricks High = 5.66 --> "5.75" Diagonal Units
09 Bricks High = 6.36 --> "6.25" Diagonal Units
10 Bricks High = 7.07 --> "7.00" Diagonal Units
And so on...

You can also do fractional bricks:
1.5 Bricks High = 1.06 --> "1.00" Diagonal Units

Of course, the bigger and more complex (and thus more) bricks you use in your FontStruct, the more accurate the thickness of your angle will become.

@everyone -- Thank you all for your kind words. I hope I've provided a possible solution for others struggling with this same problem.

@Frodo7 -- That's a terrific idea! I hadn't thought of those angles, but I'll perform some calculations to see if a similar pattern emerges for the 30º/60º angles as well.

@Frodo7 -- After performing some geometric calculations, I think the 30º/60º angles are far too difficult to come up with a similar solution. The bricks would have to be highly specialized and cannot be made through composites at this time.

@fartheststar - You are most welcome. I'm certain there is an easier way to explain it, but I'm often prone to making things overly-complicated. ;^)