NEED ANSWER TODAY - cannot display Chinese, etc language descriptions

[scottgensemer8984]

12/6/11: I got a call today - a user needs an answer on this today if at all possible, and I cannot find really anything on this in the forum, which really surprises me...

PART 1/2:

I have some users who need to translate nameplates to Chinese. I will have the same issue with Russian and others soon.

We can go to the language database (wd_lang1.mdb) and use that via the Project Ribbon > Language Conversion, but the text displays as question marks. The text also displays incorrectly in the dialog boxes.

See the attached screenshots.

Language-01 is the actual database. It displays correctly.

Language-02 shows how Chinese displays in a dialog box.

Language-03 shows the result of trying to do a language conversion on Description 2 of a component.

Language-04 before/after show the description before and after the conversion.

This looks like a font problem.

What font(s) does AutoCAD need to display these languages?

PART 2/2:

How do we type in new words/phrases into the Access database in the appropriate language?

Hope someone can help...

[scottgensemer8984]

Here are the other files. This Forum can't have more than 3 attachments...

[scottgensemer8984]

OK... Looks like my first attachments dropped off. Here are the first three.

[scottgensemer8984]

As a third part to this...

Does anyone know of a way to display multiple languages on a schematic?

This would be symbol text (say, descriptions), notes on the drawiong, title block, etc.

I have a group that wants to show (3) languages on a schematic, so I'm looking for suggestions...

Thanks, as always!!

[dougmcalexander]

You can enter the three languages for description text as Line1, Line2, and Line3 entries in the Defaults list. There are samples in there already.  Select all description text from the Defaults (wd_desc.wdd file) list and the three lines of description will contain three languages for the same word or phrase.  So your component description text (a.k.a. function text) might be something like this:

Line1  Emergency Stop

Line2  紧急停止

Line3  Notabschaltung

[scottgensemer8984]

Doug:

Thanks for the reply.

That answers the description text, but what about other text? Like notes or title block attributes? Any thoughts there?

Did you take a look at my original problem about displaying the text? That's still a puzzle...

[dougmcalexander]

No time to look too deep into it right now.  For the title block, you need to use the DD1, DD2, and DD3, one for each language.  All languages work for me.  Be sure you installed them.  You might do a change install. 

[scottgensemer8984]

Doug:

DD1, 2 & 3 are what? I do not recognize them. (probably just oldtimer's disease...)

Install them? What are refering to? Fonts in Acad-e? Or Windows?

Change install in Acad-e?

[scottgensemer8984]

OK - I have DD1-3 figured out. I think... They are the description fields for the title block description fields (in my title block as DESC1-3).

I also solved the display problem in the language dialog boxes. I had to install Asian language support in Windows > Control Panel.

However, the text STILL will not display correctly on the schematic sheet when I run Language Conversion (I tried Chinese). I get a "Text not swapped" message, and the text shows as (2) question marks. The command line shows the translated chinese word in Chinese gliphs, but not on the sheet. I find NO chinese or any other font in the AutoCAD Text Styles dialog box. I find no Chinese font under Windows > Fonts. (Or for any other language, come to that.)

I also cannot figure out where the foreign character sets came from to populate the MS Access database. Without that, I cannot add any new words/phrases...

I'm stumped. There HAS to be a way to do this. There is nothing I can find in the help for this, or any of the training manuals.

Does anybody have a white paper or something on how to add/manage foreign languages in Acad-e? Especially those, like Chinese, that do not use A-Z characters? What fonts need to be installed, where they install from, like that.

[scottgensemer8984]

Here is another screenshot showing the [failed] result of swapping english for chinese. Should have added this to origiamnl post...

[Icemanau]

From the attached picture, I would say that ACADE is not using a font that allows asian characters in it's attributes.

As ACADE normally uses different font's from Windows in the dwg space, you will get results like in your screenshot.

The command line is using the Windows font, while the font displayed in the dwg space is an ACAD font. Being a description, it is most likely the WD text style. Depending on the font you have selected for this style, it couold be fairly limited in what it displays.

To change it would be a matter of playing around with the Text style dialog box and trying different fonts for use with the WD text style.

Regards Brad

[robotman2]

Needs to be Unicode font.