AutoCAD Blueprints and Engineering Drawings - Translated Inside the Files, With Layers and Dimensions Intact

Why drawings are translated inside the files

Engineering drawings carry text in title blocks (project, drawing number, revision, scale, drawn and checked by), general notes, material and finish specifications, legends and symbol keys, dimension and leader text, room and equipment labels, schedules (doors, windows, reinforcement, cable, equipment) and revision clouds, and all of it is placed by the engineer in relation to the geometry. A translation delivered as a separate list of translated notes is useless on site; a translation typed over a PDF loses the layers, the scale and the editability; and a drawing redrawn by a translator introduces errors. We translate inside the native files - AutoCAD DWG and DXF, with text entities, multiline text, attributes in blocks and tables edited in place on their layers; Revit and other BIM models, with parameters, annotations and schedules edited; and PDF plan sets where no source exists, with text replaced in position - so that the translated drawing opens, plots and edits like the original, with the geometry untouched and the text fitted to its space.

Engineers in the discipline, reading the drawing as an engineer

Drawing text is terse and disciplinary - a structural note about reinforcement cover, an MEP note about duct pressure class, a process note about a valve's fail position, a hydropower note about a penstock's design head - and it is translated here by engineers in the discipline: civil and structural engineers for structural and civil drawings, architects for architectural sets, mechanical and HVAC engineers for MEP, electrical engineers for power and control drawings, process engineers for P&IDs, hydropower and dam engineers for the plants that Georgian, Norwegian, Turkish, Chinese and other companies build on Georgian rivers, road engineers for the highway and tunnel projects on the East-West corridor. The engineer knows what the note means, renders it in the term the target country's engineers use, keeps the standard references (EN, ISO, DIN, GOST, ASTM, SNiP, the Georgian construction norms) in their designations, preserves the units and the drawing conventions (first-angle versus third-angle projection, ISO versus ASME tolerancing, metric versus imperial), and flags a note that contradicts the geometry rather than reproducing it.

Project drawing sets: construction, hydropower, roads and industry

Georgia's construction and infrastructure projects run in several languages at once: a Chinese contractor building a highway tunnel for the Roads Department with a European employer's engineer, a Norwegian developer building a hydropower plant with Turkish and Georgian contractors, a Turkish developer building a hotel with a Georgian design institute, an international lender's consultants reviewing a water project, a German or Italian manufacturer supplying a plant to a Georgian factory. Their drawing sets - design drawings, shop drawings, as-built drawings, method statement sketches - are exchanged between parties who read different languages, and employers' engineers, permit authorities and lenders require Georgian or English versions. We translate full drawing sets with a team of engineers working from one glossary agreed with the project's engineers, maintain the glossary across the project's years and revisions, deliver bilingual drawings (two languages side by side in the title block and notes) or trilingual sets where a project requires Georgian, English and a third language, and translate the specifications, bills of quantities and schedules that go with the drawings so that the terminology matches.

Permits, tenders and manufacturers

Three readers require translated drawings formally. Permit authorities: Georgian municipalities and the technical supervision agency require construction permit drawings in Georgian, and foreign permit authorities require Georgian companies' drawings in their language, with the design institute's stamps and the engineer's signatures preserved and a certificate of translation attached. Tender committees: tender drawings are issued in the tender's language and bidders' technical proposals with their drawings must be in it, on the tender's deadline. Manufacturers and suppliers: equipment drawings, general arrangement drawings, foundation and connection drawings and the drawings in manuals and catalogs are translated for Georgian buyers, installers and inspectors, and Georgian manufacturers' drawings for foreign buyers and certification bodies. We translate for each with the certification the reader requires and in the format it accepts, and we provide the drawing register and transmittal in the target language.

Formats, text fitting and quality control

Translation changes text length - Georgian and German run longer than English, Chinese and Korean shorter - and drawing text has fixed space, so translated text is fitted by adjusting text height within the drawing's standards, wrapping multiline text, resizing table cells and, where a note cannot fit, placing it with a leader as the drawing's conventions allow, never by overlapping geometry or hiding text; block attributes and title block fields are edited without exploding blocks, layers are preserved, and fonts are substituted only with fonts that support the target script (Georgian, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese) and plot correctly. Every translated drawing is checked in two passes: an engineer checks the terminology and the meaning of every note against the source, and a CAD specialist checks that the file opens, plots, and matches the original in every entity except the text, with a comparison report for drawing sets. Delivery is in the original file version and format, with PDFs plotted from the translated files where the client wants them, and with the drawing register updated.

Pricing, timing and how to order

Drawings are priced per drawing for standard sheets and per word for text-heavy sheets and specifications, with CAD editing included and translation memory discounts across a project's sets; bilingual and trilingual sets, BIM models and PDF-only sources are quoted on inspection, and framework rates apply to projects with continuing drawing flows. A small set is translated in a few days; a full project set with a team on an agreed schedule, typically one to four weeks; revisions in proportion to the changed sheets.

To order, send the drawings in their native format (DWG, DXF, RVT, or PDF where no source exists) with any glossary, previous translations and the project's language requirements on email or through a file transfer, and tell us the discipline, the readers and the deadline; we reply within the hour with a fixed quote, the engineer assigned, the format plan and a schedule. Delivery is by file transfer in the original formats with a comparison report, and certified paper sets where a permit authority or tender requires them, collected at Agmashenebeli 117, near Marjanishvili Metro, or couriered anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

Other medical and technical documents