Simply closing and reopening the drawing is not enough. You must close the entire AutoCAD session and restart it for the font cache to rebuild.
In CAD, standard SHX fonts only support up to 255 characters (ASCII). To support languages with thousands of characters, like Chinese, Japanese, or Korean (CJK), CAD uses "Big Fonts." Hzdx.shx falls under this category, as explained in ProStructures documentation .
: Navigate to your AutoCAD installation directory. The typical path is: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD [Version]\Fonts Copy and Paste : Move the Hzdx.shx file into that folder.
(if comfortable with hex):
: Text appears as a series of "?" characters or other random symbols instead of proper Chinese characters.
Unlike standard TrueType Fonts (TTF) that are vector-based and installed via Windows, Hzdx.shx is a native AutoCAD shape file optimized for CAD performance.
Hzdx.shx is a specialized SHX Bigfont designed for displaying simplified Chinese characters in CAD drawings. The "Hz" prefix in its name indicates its Chinese character support, making it part of a family of similar fonts that includes hzfs.shx (Chinese仿宋), hztxt.shx, and gbcbig.shx [15†L12-L13][9†L10-L11]. Hzdx.shx Font
One of the most important aspects of SHX fonts is their two-tier architecture. Older SHX fonts only support up to 255 characters, which is adequate for Western alphabets but falls far short of the thousands of characters required for Asian languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean [2†L6-L8][16†L7-L9].
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| Problem | Likely Cause | Solution | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Hzdx.shx missing the character's code page mapping | Switch to HzTxt.shx or gbcbig.shx (Chinese Big5) | | Font replaced with simplex.shx | Missing Hzdx.shx on someone else's computer | Use ETRANSMIT to include the SHX file, or convert to Mtext → Explode (not recommended) | | Vertical text overlaps | "Vertical" option turned on incorrectly | Edit the text style → turn OFF Vertical | | Thin lines when plotting | SHX fonts plot at actual vector width | Set LWDEFAULT or use CTB/STB plot style to add lineweight | | Slow performance with many text objects | SHX font is actually large (rare) | Use TXT2MTXT to combine single-line text, or purge unused text styles | Simply closing and reopening the drawing is not enough
While this is an advanced topic, it offers maximum flexibility for specialized applications such as creating custom symbols, logos, or even specialized character sets for niche industries.
The standard simplified Chinese font for AutoCAD.
This is the simplest and most reliable method: To support languages with thousands of characters, like