Autodesk Exchange App – Translate

Autodesk rolled out their Exchange Apps recently. If you’re using a 2012 product you may have already noticed the new tab in your Exchange window. Exchange Apps is a place for developers to get their products out to Autodesk’s user base. As of this time, most of the applications were developed by Autodesk, though more privately developed apps are showing up. Many of the apps are free or have trial periods. Once you download an app it shows up in the Plug-ins tab of your AutoCAD ribbon interface.

Yesterday I downloaded a few apps just to try the system out and found one app that might be useful. The app is called COINS Translate and it will translate text or mtext from one language to another using the Google Translate service.

Here I’ve got an AutoCAD drawing and note:After I click on the COINS Translate Add-in I get the following dialog to choose my languages.

My mtext is automatically converted to the language I choose.The process is certainly much faster than copying and pasting from a website.  This would be especially true for an annotated drawing with many text entities.  The app is mostly a novelty for me, but I’m sure there are some international designers/drafters out there who can utilize this app.