Originally Posted by
Tyke
To my problem: I was approached by a couple of translators about translating AutoCAD drawings and as there are a few programs out there that "can translate" the drawings I took a look at them, not wanting to reinvent the wheel. There are two types of software for translating AutoCAD drawings, one for DWG files and on for DXF files. The ones for DWG files all need AutoCAD installed on the computers and the ones for DXF files take an ascii DXF file. I was unable to find any software that did both, but that's by the way. I saw that the software was written by programmers without an in depth knowledge of AutoCAD. The basic principle of the software is that the program extracts all of the text entities from the AutoCAD file and exports it to a text file. This text file is then loaded into a CAT Tool (Computer Aided Translation) and after translation the text entities are reinserted into the AutoCAD file. But a lot of the text entities are not translated by the software that I tested, for example XData, XRecords, etc, all of the so called "invisible" text. But for GIS and BIM this text is important and must be translated.
I have an old VBA module that I wrote about 15 years ago that iterates all visible text entities on the screen allowing the checking of the text placement, to ensure there is no overlapping or over writing of text. This could be expanded to take care of "invisible" text and also written in .NET, thereby covering the DWG aspect. I also have a .NET program that can extract ALL of the text entities from an ascii DXF file, export it to a text file and reinsert it into the DXF file. So in essence I can do all that I need (or almost). But the biggest problem with the app that I have been asked to develop is that it will be used by translators without AutoCAD on there computers, absolutely no CAD experience (they are "language engineers") and with no access to a network with AutoCAD, and sitting anywhere in the world.
It would be possible to do what I need with RealDWG or in the cloud, but both are too expensive. I intend having two apps, a basic one that will be free and an advanced one for a small charge. It is not going to make me rich! I was hoping for a solution by reading the DWG into a database, but it looks like it is not possible. I think now the only solution is to use a DWG-DXF converter and save the DWG as DXF, extract the text, translate it, reinsert into the DXF and convert the DXF to DWG. I need to look on Source Forge for some converters, do you have any knowledge in this field. I am wary that the converters might not do a clean round robin conversion and cause a loss of information in the final DWG.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.