Encrypting/Securing Hatch Patterns

[BiGBang]

Hi folks. I'm a programmer, new to this forum, and have not had much experience using AutoCAD.

One of my friends has written some hatches for AutoCAD and is interested in selling them.He asked me if that's possible to deploy the hatches without letting the end user access the source (at least not in plain text).

As far as I could find out, AutoCAD saves the hatches in a .ptn file in plain text. Is there anyway that I can alter the way AutoCAD accesses custom user hatches and at least make it not very accessible for his customers?

Thanks in advance.

[rkmcswain]

Is there anyway that I can alter the way AutoCAD accesses custom user hatches and at least make it not very accessible for his customers?

Thanks in advance.

 

AFAIK, there is no way to load an "encrypted" hatch pattern.

But even if you could do this, the hatch pattern itself, once in a DWG file is easily copied, shared, etc., and on top of that, the raw data that makes up the hatch pattern definition is stored in the drawing and it's fairly trivial to extract this data. See: GETPAT.LSP found here: http://www.turvill.com/t2/free_stuff/index.htm

[BiGBang]

Thanks rkmcswain,

That was fast and accurate. Great forum indeed.

[BIGAL]

People will still buy your hatches it just a matter of time as to when they turn up every where, its a big world you may still make a lot of money.

 

It is still illegal to give away something that is not yours when you sell the hatch patterns you are buying a right to use, all software is done this way you actually don't own your Autocad you own a right to use. Read the licence agreement.

 

Put a copyright notice with the sale hope for the best.

 

I had a personal involvement in a product around $100,000 investment best guess 12 months ahead of the chinese to make money before they flooded the market with copies.

[BiGBang]

Put a copyright notice with the sale hope for the best.

BIGAL, that's definitely true. But copyright doesn't mean **** in Iran. So it's best to secure it as much as you can or forget about making money. ($100,000 investment in software here without highly secured locks (Aladdin hardlocks, Sentinel, ...) => at most $100,000 sale!

Anyway, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[hugha]

Further to rkmcswain's remarks - all comments in .PAT files are ignored when loaded to a .DWG or .RVT along with any pattern description.

The only identifying text string you could possibly exploit is the hatch pattern name itself (just might work :wink: for AutoCAD - Revit allows renaming while loading )

 

 

hth

Hugh Adamson

www.hatchkit.com.au

[ReMark]

What if the custom hatch patterns were buried in a lisp routine that was then compiled (not sure if "compiled" is the correct word to use here but you know what I mean)?

[rkmcswain]

What if the custom hatch patterns were buried in a lisp routine that was then compiled (not sure if "compiled" is the correct word to use here but you know what I mean)?

 

Still, once the hatch pattern is in the drawing, it's easily shared and/or extracted back to a PAT file.

[eldon]

What if all the hatches were exploded

[rkmcswain]

What if all the hatches were exploded

 

Pretty difficult to make your customers explode hatches created from patterns they buy from you... :wink:

 

I suppose you could write your own custom hatching routines that created custom ARX objects instead of hatch entities...