Request a quoteRequest a quote ↗AutoCAD has no translate button. Drawing text is translated one of six ways, from retyping it by hand to an editor that writes the translation back into the DWG. For a few sheets, retype with the checklist below. For a set, use an editor that writes back.
Everything on the sheet that a person reads: general notes, callouts and leaders, the title block, schedules and tables, door and equipment tags, dimension text that was typed over, and text in blocks, including attributes. Some of it does not live in the drawing you opened. Text in an external reference sits in the referenced file, so it has to travel with the set.
Two things look like text and are not. Text converted to lines (Express Tools’ Explode Text) and text on a scanned sheet are geometry: they cannot be extracted as text and have to be retyped. Layer names are text, but a reader never sees them on the printed sheet.
switches AutoCAD’s own interface and documentation to another language, as Autodesk describes it. The text in your drawings stays exactly as it was drawn. Our post on how to change the language in AutoCAD covers the packs and the command names.
✕ Does not translate a note
renames layers to match a CAD standard. It does not touch a single note.
✕ Does not translate a note
No. AutoCAD has no command that translates the text in a drawing. Two features are often mistaken for one:
Translating a drawing means replacing every note, callout, title block entry and schedule, in the drawing itself.
Methods 1 and 2 are where the hours go, because retyping a label takes longer than translating it.
| Mark | Method | Comes back | Retyping | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M-01 | Retyped by hand in AutoCAD→→ | A translated DWG | Every label | Whatever that person knows that day |
| M-02 | A table from a translator→→→ | A Word or Excel table of source and translation | Every label | The translator's choice, unless you supplied a glossary |
| M-03 | DXF extraction into a translation tool→→→→ | A DXF, converted back to DWG | If it fails | A term base, if the translator uses one |
| M-04 | A machine-translation plug-in in AutoCAD→→→ | The same DWG with machine-translated text | Checked | Machine translation; a glossary only if the plug-in accepts one |
| M-05 | An online AI translator→→ | A translated DWG or DXF, depending on the service | Depends | A term base on some platforms |
| M-06 | Our editor in NEOLO→→ | The DWG, translated in place and reviewed | None | Your approved term base, the same as the specification's |
Most of these problems come from taking the text out of the drawing and putting it back. The longer French affects every method.
The six problems above, against the six methods. On method 6, we quote what has no drawing text separately and adjust the blocks the French runs past.
A handful of sheets
For a handful of sheets, doing it in-house is reasonable. To keep it clean:
Past a few sheets, retyping costs more than translating. These are the signs:
Our editor takes the text out of the DWG and writes the approved translation back in, so nobody retypes a label. We built it in NEOLO for this one job, and each step answers one of the problems above:
The editor, step by step
That is how a 72-sheet data centre set went from French to English: 49,589 words on the sheets, returned as DWG files. The specification followed, and its addendum drew on the drawings’ wording. On a road swing bridge, 101 electrical sheets went through as one set; on the last 33 added, 92% of the words were repetitions. Across all our work, we have translated over 4,000 AutoCAD drawings.
A data centre set, French to English, returned as DWG files.
The text on the drawings
Of those words appeared elsewhere in the set: each settled once.
AutoCAD drawings translated across all our work.
It works with both of our two ways to work: an AI draft your own team reviews in NEOLO, or translation by our specialists. Either way, the drawing comes back as a DWG with the translation in place. See how our AutoCAD drawing translation works, step by step.
These objects, in model space and every layout, in tab order:
What must not change, and what has no text to write back into:
The one you sent. Dates, scales and project numbers stay as issued.
Send your package: specs, drawings or reports. We reply with a price and a date.
FreeFree terminology checkUpload a recent translated deliverable. We return a short report of every inconsistent term.
