uneditable block in autocad ?

[pmadhwal7]

Hi all,

I have a block that I have to protect with a password, whenever someone explodes it is not exploded nor is it edited, can it happen, only someone can see it.???

legend.dwg

[BIGAL]

Bottom line anything can be recreated with enough time. With pdf to dwg now even less time.

[pmadhwal7]

4 hours ago, BIGAL said:

Bottom line anything can be recreated with enough time. With pdf to dwg now even less time.

so can it is possible that third party can not able to convert to the pdf,

[Dadgad]

If someone has the image in whatever format, as a .dwg, .pdf, or just about anything else they could still pretty easily just TRACE it.

More work than just copying, exploding or editing and using yours, but not a huge task, nor do I see any way to get around that basic premise/problem.    

[pmadhwal7]

4 hours ago, Dadgad said:

If someone has the image in whatever format, as a .dwg, .pdf, or just about anything else they could still pretty easily just TRACE it.

More work than just copying, exploding or editing and using yours, but not a huge task, nor do I see any way to get around that basic premise/problem.    

is their any way??

[Steven P]

Short answer, a password protected block is not possible.

 

Most people would see "cannot be edited, I'll just copy it or trace it"

 

If it is a vector - lines - then it is easy to copy and then edit if it cannot be edited directly. PDFs are saved as vectors (If you had an older CAD then they are saved as images - I might be wrong here). You could save the legend as an image, a TIFF and insert that, but then you cannot edit it if needed. Images can also be converted but (again I might be wrong), you have to pay for that software. Go a step further and something I did on a website once, have 2 images, the text and another for the symbols laid on top of each other, a right click copy will only copy one half of the legend, but that won't stop software converting 2 images, it just takes longer. You could explode everything - including text - to be lines, circles and arcs, so if you want to edit the legend it takes longer... but at the end of the day I cannot think of a way that any part of a drawing cannot be copied and used elsewhere. All you can do is make the process take longer, perhaps if you do that well enough it will take longer than recreating a legend from scratch.

 

Comments about tracing over the legend, if the copier went into the model they would probably just copy all the symbols into a traced legend if they weren't blocks in the drawings - when they would just use the block, not a big job to recreate the legend from scratch. You could put in a copyright and try to enforce that, put something in the legend where you can point at a copy and say "this bit here shows that it is a direct copy" (say a full stop sized shape, hidden in the text, would take some finding unless you were looking for it, I used to draw the dots in 'i' as sheep just for fun - no other reason apart from my amusement)

 

 

So no, cannot stop it being copied, just make it harder to copy.

[pmadhwal7]

23 minutes ago, Steven P said:

Short answer, a password protected block is not possible.

 

Most people would see "cannot be edited, I'll just copy it or trace it"

 

If it is a vector - lines - then it is easy to copy and then edit if it cannot be edited directly. PDFs are saved as vectors (If you had an older CAD then they are saved as images - I might be wrong here). You could save the legend as an image, a TIFF and insert that, but then you cannot edit it if needed. Images can also be converted but (again I might be wrong), you have to pay for that software. Go a step further and something I did on a website once, have 2 images, the text and another for the symbols laid on top of each other, a right click copy will only copy one half of the legend, but that won't stop software converting 2 images, it just takes longer. You could explode everything - including text - to be lines, circles and arcs, so if you want to edit the legend it takes longer... but at the end of the day I cannot think of a way that any part of a drawing cannot be copied and used elsewhere. All you can do is make the process take longer, perhaps if you do that well enough it will take longer than recreating a legend from scratch.

 

Comments about tracing over the legend, if the copier went into the model they would probably just copy all the symbols into a traced legend if they weren't blocks in the drawings - when they would just use the block, not a big job to recreate the legend from scratch. You could put in a copyright and try to enforce that, put something in the legend where you can point at a copy and say "this bit here shows that it is a direct copy" (say a full stop sized shape, hidden in the text, would take some finding unless you were looking for it, I used to draw the dots in 'i' as sheep just for fun - no other reason apart from my amusement)

 

 

So no, cannot stop it being copied, just make it harder to copy.

 

so that means no way to do the uneditable block

[Steven P]

Not really. if someone wants to use the information on a drawing they can.

[BIGAL]

The person that receives the dwg can be asked to sign a copyright agreement ie no copy but very hard to police.

[pmadhwal7]

6 hours ago, BIGAL said:

The person that receives the dwg can be asked to sign a copyright agreement ie no copy but very hard to police.

If they digitize my file then there is no problem because when inserting the AutoCAD file from the PDF does not come in the same format as the Exploded line, it works hard