Page 15 of 17		     CREATING A DATA FILE

Besides using AcroTran to translate a DXF file, another way that you can create
an AcroSpin data file is to use your favorite text editor to enter all of the
lines and points by hand.  You should make sure that the text editor creates a
standard ASCII file, with no special characters in it.	This method can get
pretty tedious if you have lots of data.

You may find it more convenient to write a computer program in your favorite
language to create the data file for you.  The data files for many of the
objects you have seen so far in this tutorial were created by Turbo Pascal
programs.  The data files and some of the programs that created them are
included on your AcroSpin distribution diskette.  For example, the data file
for the cube is CUBE.ACD, which was created by CUBE.PAS.

Using computer programs to create your data files makes it much easier to
incorporate text in your objects.  AcroSpin expects only lines and points in
the data file, so text characters must be specified in terms of lines.	Your
AcroSpin distribution diskette contains the Turbo Pascal subroutine,
WRITETEX.PAS, that generated the text in the previous objects.

If you do use a text editor to create your data file by hand, as was done
for the next object, you may end up with a blank stare on your face.

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