Ever used any of the text translation tools on the web? Just when you think the internet is nothing but a big time waster, they go and put something really useful out there. Hours of real business productivity just waiting for you so that you can translate all your product manuals into other languages and expand your business into the far reaches of the globe.

But woe to those without the knowledge of the internet and all its usefulness! Attempting to translate instructions on how to mount a hydraulic ram, for instance, they may end up writing about a water goat instead! Looking for something like this, they instead may be directing people to this or even worse, something like this.

My esteemed colleague and blog-writing addict, Jeff Sweeney, offered up this true story of chimera from a customer and I just couldn’t resist. It’s not often that you get to use the words ‘water’ and ‘goat’ next to each other in a sentence, let alone broadcast it to the public. Keep the good blog ideas coming Sweeney.

Before I let you squirm in your chair any longer from imagining the embarrassment of a translation gone terribly wrong, let me provide you with the solution to your translation problems – pictures!  That’s right, do away with those pesky words altogether and re-use your 3D CAD data to provide content-rich and interactive images and animations that describe your assembly process, cleaning manuals, work instructions, repair guides and many other technical publications. Words are optional in this world and not a chance a water goat will arrive without you knowing about it.

Sign up today for an evaluation of 3DVIA Composer and see how it can transform your documentation needs: www.solidworks.com/composer_eval