2012
AutoCAD
Here’s a very simple example. I received a drawing with some annotations that I want to translate (see Figure 5). Figure 3: We found a suitable app—OffsetInXref
We open up the product description page, check the ratings and comments made by other users, and read through the helpfile documentation. It looks like this does just what we need, so we click the download link. The plug-in installer automatically runs and adds a new panel to the AutoCAD Plug-ins tab, which confirms that installation was successful (see Figure 4).
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Figure 5: Mtext to translate.
Figure 4: Each plug-in adds a panel or tab to the AutoCAD ribbon so you can easily find it.
After installing the app, I simply click the button it added to the Plug-ins ribbon tab and select all the MTexts I want to translate. A dialog then lets me choose the language to translate from and to (Figure 6). It even includes an option to auto-detect the ‘from’ language. (I’m using the auto-detect option on the text in Figure 5.)
Now we’re ready to start offsetting geometry from inside the block inserts that we couldn’t work with before. We don’t even have to restart AutoCAD. OffsetInXref was originally posted as an Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) Plugin of the Month on the Autodesk Labs website (http://bit.ly/nfN73w). The Plugin of the Month program is intended to demonstrate that you can create productivity enhancing tools and utilities with relatively little investment in learning to program using Autodesk Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). All Plugins of the Month come with full source code to allow you to study and enhance them. Three free apps
A large part of my work at Autodesk over the last six months has been coordinating the review and testing of apps submitted to the store to make sure the shelves were full when it launched. That means I’ve played with almost all the apps that are published there today. Many are free; many are trial versions (offering either functionality-limited or time-limited use); others can be bought via a simple PayPal transaction. Prices for purchased apps range from less than $5 to more than $1,000. I’ll come back and review some interesting purchased apps in the future. But to whet your appetite, here are my suggestions for three free apps to try if you want to experiment with the Autodesk Exchange Apps store. COINS Translate COINS is a global company that creates and sells construction industry software solutions. COINS has posted a fun, free app to the store called COINS Translate. This ticks all the boxes for me as a cool plug-in: it’s simple, it’s useful, and (with the whole world going nutty over cloud computing) it uses a web service.
Figure 6: Selecting translation options
Click the ‘Go’ button in the dialog, and the selected text is replaced with the translation. My MText now looks like Figure 7.
Figure 7: The result of the translation
Working with colleagues around the world, I often have to translate text into English. COINS Translate uses the Google Translate web service to translate MText and Text in drawings.
ADN DWF/PDF Batch Publish DWF/PDF Batch Publish is another ADN Plugin of the Month. This was by far the most popular download from the Autodesk Labs website, and it’s already topping the download list in the
August 2011
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