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Check License Used to Produce Drawings


Bill Tillman

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We often receive CAD files from our customers for use in processing their orders. It has been suggested that some of these files may have been produced with unauthorized copies of AutoCAD. Not wanting to make any accusations against our customers i was looking for a way to covertly record the license number these files were produced with. We are 100% in compliance and work closely with our reseller to comply with the EULA. We are looking for a way to insure that we don't unwittingly use unauthorized drawings.

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I thought license numbers were stored in the Windows Registry not in the drawings themselves.

 

What would happen if you knew for a fact a client/customer was sending you drawings produced with a pirated copy of an AutoDesk product?

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I think there is something embedded in the actual file as well. Thats what we're after. And since this is only an allegation at this point, not a known fact we want to proceed carefully. Afterall, they are a customer and may not even be aware of this problem. If we find the drawing provided to us was produced by unauthorized copies we would respectfully inform them of this and then offer to reproduce the work for them using legal copies, for a fee of course. If they decline we would again respectfully remind them of our obligation under the EULA and look for alternatives to fill their order. This hasnt actually happened yet that we know of. What brought this up was the.customers using educational copies of AutoCAD. We're trying to be proactive here.

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Educational copies; very grey area at the moment since Autodesk seem to have changed their attiude. Also some very strong opinions about it.

 

As far as I know still no definative statement from Autodesk about the situation.

 

This brought up a long debate in this thread: http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?87243-Remove-autocad-educational-stamp-from-all-dwg-in-the-folder&highlight=educational

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We get drawings from some other software and it prompts that they were not created in Autocad, so it may be feasible to get some further info regarding dwg creation, you may not find an answer as Autodesk may not want to make this sort of info publicly available. As a DWG is a compressed binary format file it can be pulled apart but it would be like a needle in a hay stack.

 

Remove nearly everything in suspect dwg then dxf and just crawl over it make sure it still gives error message though.

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