Educational license issue

[neuri]

1 of my colleagues accidentally copied a block from another cad file that was from one of our contractors on an educational license.

 

Now, whenever he opens that file, he gets a prompt saying it is an educational license, so we tried deleting the block, saving as another file etc. etc. Nothing works.

 

BUT, when I open it on my PC instead of his, the educational prompt does not appear and the watermark is not there either when I print it out.

 

He tried deleting the whole thing, saved the original copy from his email. Even tried taking my copy which does not have the educational prompt but all to no avail.

 

Any idea how we can fix this? Drawing again from scratch is not viable at this point.

[BIGAL]

Get your contractor to buy a legit version or maybe a cheaper clone, thats why in the big bad world there is such a thing as copyright. 

[neuri]

we don't work with them anymore but the issue is the file is now "corrupted".

 

On my colleague's PC, no matter how many times he deletes the file and re-downloads it, it shows an educational license.

 

He saves it to a thumb drive, comes over to my PC and opens it, no more educational license attached to it.

 

What in the world??

[ReMark]

There are a couple of ways the educational "banner" (a.k.a. - plot stamp) can be removed from a drawing.  A simple Internet search should be enough to get you started down the path to its removal.

This is not an endorsement for the use of illegally obtained software.  It is acknowledged however that mistakes do happen occasionally.

Edited December 31, 2018 by ReMark

[f700es]

Download new 30-day demo of AutoCAD LT or Full. Open infected drawing and save back to 2014 version. This should remove the plot-stamp.  IIRC there is no longer a plot stamp in current student versions. I read this a year or so ago.

[neuri]

I tried the saving to 2014 trick, didn't work.

 

I did not re-download a new copy of Autocad though as we are using licensed copies.

 

Same file, on his PC it prompts the warning, that very same file when transferred to a thumbdrive and opened on my PC, does not prompt anything.

 

This is weird as hell.

 

Does it matter if my colleague is using AutoCAD 2014 while mine is the LT version of 2014?

[f700es]

What version did you use to save back too? In further reading it seems that AutoDesk has started the edu watermark again. Just save as a r2000 dxf and it should be gone.

[rkmcswain]

On 12/31/2018 at 7:23 AM, f700es said:

  IIRC there is no longer a plot stamp in current student versions. I read this a year or so ago.

 

The EDU plot stamp was removed from displaying starting with 2014 SP1, it was *supposedly* removed altogether from the binary DWG file starting with 2015, but it's back in 2019 now. 

[rkmcswain]

On 12/31/2018 at 7:23 AM, f700es said:

Download new 30-day demo of AutoCAD LT or Full. Open infected drawing and save back to 2014 version. 

 

That will not work. If it did, then everybody pirating using EDU copies would only need one legit copy to make all of their drawings "legit".

 

[f700es]

Hmm, I thought that, as above, opening in a newer version removed it from showing. Alas I was in error. Didn't know that 2019 brought it back. The r2000 DXF should still work. Sure it destroys all intelligent data in the file but better than starting over. /shrug

[rkmcswain]

@f700es - I'm still skeptical as to whether the EDU versions (2015-2018) ever truly stopping embedding the EDU info at all. It would be easy to program AutoCAD to not display the plot stamp even though it existed in the DWG file.  If they did truly do this, than any EDU authored drawing files last saved with the EDU versions 2015-2018 are just as clean and good as a commercially authored DWG file.

[f700es]

Good point and I am not sure as well if it was ever really removed.

@neuri: Is there any way to upload the dwg so I can test it? I am at home this week but I do have 2018 installed to test it for you and us

[neuri]

Unfortunately it is for a tender project with a famous hotel, the file is confidential.

 

Seems like there is no way to remove it, we figured when he needs to work on it we'll just switch PCs.

[f700es]

Understood on the confidential info but try to save as a r2000 dxf and then reinsert into a dwg and see what happens. Good luck.

[neuri]

I saved it as a R2000 DXF and it worked!

 

Saved again as a .dwg file and that did not prompt an Education version prompt either.

 

What is the difference between DXF and DWG anyway?

[f700es]

This is an drawing exchange file format. It basically strips all intelligent data from the drawing. Sometimes this works as all you might want is the visual data. 

[rkmcswain]

@neuri @f700es

I wouldn't say that DXF "strips all intelligent data" from a drawing. Lines, circles, arcs, text, polylines, and all other entities are still intelligent in the sense that they still contain accurate definition data. IOW, accuracy is not lost by storing the drawing as a DXF.  Since DXF is documented, anyone can write a program to read/write DXF files. DWG format is always binary and is not documented by Autodesk. DXF is limited of course, evidently it does not retain the EDU plot stamp, and other things such as vertical application data (Plant 3D, Civil 3D, Arch, etc).

 

In a nutshell, if you are drawing basic CAD entities, DWG vs DXF generally won't matter, other than file size (DXF will be larger)

[f700es]

"evidently it does not retain the EDU plot stamp, and other things such as vertical application data (Plant 3D, Civil 3D, Arch, etc)." Exactly what I meant by "intelligent data". Of course it knows "Lines, circles, arcs, text, polylines" etc as it is STILL a drawing file.