Preventing our PDFs From Being Imported into Acad as Autocad Entities?

[ILoveMadoka]

We recently found one of our subcontractors has been taking our PDF files importing them into autocad

which effectively gives them the autocad drawing.
What can we do to make the pdf in such a way that every page is an image vs vector data so that it cannot be simply converted to autocad?

(I doubt they'd take the time to use conversion tools or trace the dwg)

Passwords are not an option because we have to distribute the pdfs..

 

Currently the best ways that we have found is

1) Print the drawing, scan it and make the pdf from the scanned images. (time consuming)

2) Export the pages out to JPG then recreate the PDF from the JPGs. (time consuming)

 

Is there a way to achieve that type of result without having to reverse engineer every PDF?

 

Our desire is to either use some settings in Autocad or something done inside of Adobe Acrobat to the PDF after it is created?

I've tried Flattening in Acrobat,

I've tried the Raster/Vector slider in Acrobat

I've tried plotting with Transparency checked in Autocad.

and still the pdf can be simply imported and converted.

 

I tried (re) printing the PDF with Print As Image inside Acrobat but it does not create a PDF, it creates a .pm file.

 

Please advise..

 

 

[SLW210]

If they are determined, they will reproduce it, even if it means physically measuring it, tracing, etc. Are the drawing dimensioned?

 

Someone asked similar to this not long ago, lot's of ideas in that thread. Sheet Set and plot to rasterised pdf - AutoCAD Drawing Management & Output - AutoCAD Forums (cadtutor.net)

 

 

 

 

[SLW210]

I forgot to ask, is there anything in their contract that prohibits them from doing so?

[ILoveMadoka]

I know they "can" retrace or run R2V to convert but that extra effort would most likely keep them from doing it.

They're doing it because it's easy. (Soft Target)

 

Nothing says they are not allowed to, but recently there seems to be something a bit more "sinister" in their motives than in times past..

It's never been an issue until very recently. Something "happened" with a converted drawing which started this entire conversation..
If they can't do it easily, that is deterrent enough for us..

I'm going to try the method in the article when I get a moment..

 

Thx..

[SLW210]

It helps to make the drawing a block and set different scales for X and Y.

[Steven P]

Was going to say make it a block, set different scales and explode (0.99X, 1.001Y Z to o elevation ?). Could do different areas of the drawing and different scales if necessary - a pain to correct that (last idea works well if you have parts, make one part different scales from the others).. of course add a note "Do Not Scale From This Drawing".

JPGOUT and PDF that, 

Good old fashioned plot to paper and scan......

Install an old CAD version that didn't do Vector PDFs (Think that was pre-2018 ?)

Some 3rd party plotters will do this

[Steven P]

Oh, and SHX font types not true type

[SLW210]

No problem with text, you can just uncheck "Capture fonts used in the drawing" and select "Convert all text to geometry" in the PDF Options. You should also uncheck everything else and see if adjusting the quality helps.

 

 

[Steven P]

Be worth setting up a plotstyle just for that I think - saves you having to remember everything, might be able to do something with LISP for all the other p[arts

[Steven P]

Not sure why I was thinking about this earlier. Maybe a bad day?

However a couple more ideas, 

Ex[lode all dashed lines to their elements before plotting (https://www.cadforum.cz/en/how-to-explode-linetypes-to-dashes-tip6804 suggests you can do this), then if your LISPs programming is up to it, randomly rotate each part slightly, offset and offset one of the end portions. Of course do this so you can't notice from your PDF. You could also change this to separate only part of each line too

Idea of different scales - how about a very slight rotation of each line - again so you can't notice on the PDFs but stop them being parallel

Could change come limes to large radius arcs,

 

That will mess with any conscientious draughtsman having all lines exploded and at the wrong angles.

 

 

I think you want the reverse of this: (https://www.cadtutor.net/forum/topic/75162-bmp-file-to-polyline-mosaic/ , I'm not sure if this would bloat a PDF file or not, if it doesn't then all is good

 

If you do this with LISP, set an undo mark at the start of your LISP routine, then end with 'undo' all your changes so your file is still good.

 

 

 

[BIGAL]

Ex[lode all dashed lines , we had a dot linetype from a 3rd party software and it would make opening a dwg take minutes as it drew the dots, only thing though how big will your pdf end up ? 

 

[Dahzee]

I don't know if this is an option or whether it works in Autocad (I use Bricscad).

 

When printing a Layout (Using DWG To PDF.pc3 or whatever it is called in Autocad) if you set your viewport with the Visual Style to say Modeling instead of 2D Wireframe it creates everything in the viewport as a bitmap.

 

Anything outside of the viewport (i.e. your Title Block) will still be vectors but the actual drawing is a bitmap.

 

It would save a step creating a jpeg first, but as I say I don't know if it works the same in Autocad or if the resolution will be good enough without making a huge file.

Bitmap PDF Test.pdf

[Steven P]

That worked for me just then - set visual style (in AutoCAD) to (3d) wireframe as a test and it plotted the PDF as a BMP with no other settings changed. I guess the other visual styles will work. Need to adjust the DPI setting I think, it was a bit blocky but I usually stick with 2d wireframe for what I need to do so never affected me before.

 

 

 

 

I am going to add all this to a list of automation to do "Screw up PDF Plot" I'll call it.. do that one day....

[SLW210]

That's what was mentioned in the link I posted in my first response.

 

 

[ILoveMadoka]

I found another method that works but it is a bit cumbersome.

In Each Layout, select your viewport

In the Properties tab change Shade Plot to Hidden/Realistic (others may work too)

 

 

You have to repeat this step for each layout (I see a .lsp in my future)

 

One issue I encountered is that my plots were always in color regardless of plot style selected, even if I changed the VP color to white.

 

I had to change all my layers to white to get a BW drawing.

I could not successfully import the PDF as Autocad entities.

If I checked Raster in my Import dialog it came in as an unconvertable image.

 

If there is a better method to get a B&W print, I'd love to know.

 

[Steven P]

Solving another problem but put detail into the drawing as an image -unless you set up a folder to save the images to they will vanish (https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/PDFIMPORT-will-not-import-image-content-into-an-AutoCAD-drawing.html)

 

Generally the images we have in PDFs are company logos, so loosing them is no problem (and if you are copying a drawing actually saves a step to delete them anyway)

 

Of course, this would work best if only some of the detail was an image and not obvious it is an image so that the user perhaps won't notice to start with - I am thinking perhaps every 5th text object, something like that, so some text converts and at a first glance it all looks good. Something I might think about see what can be done with this idea

[BIGAL]

Steven P you can plot to a png etc then bring back in imageattach, maybe do all the line work leave the dims, pretty hard to read if can not see lines. You can not though overlap images as far as I know, the draw order will kick in.

[Steven P]

7 hours ago, BIGAL said:

Steven P you can plot to a png etc then bring back in imageattach, maybe do all the line work leave the dims, pretty hard to read if can not see lines. You can not though overlap images as far as I know, the draw order will kick in.

 

That's what I thought, if you cannot see the lines or if they don't convert that's the goal. Half having a thought though that if all the lines are missing then others will look to see what is wrong, if only some of the lines are missing they might not notice till they have converted the drawing, worked on it and maybe sent it out elsewhere. I'll see if I can make something up in the next few weeks, the thought for now is explode all / some text to lines, perhaps every 10th word and line replace as an image, make the other lines as hatches (with no border so harder to snap to), and perhaps mess with the scaling (each quadrant to have different x and y scales (0.999% and 0.001% for example))

[SLW210]

It will preserve the images in a folder called PDF Images.

[Steven P]

'out of the box' - at least with mine, PDF to DWG conversion the images were removed from the drawing till I went through the options settings and so on - which is the goal here I think, add a few barriers in the way to make copying trickier (to be honest though, in my line of work, the client pays us for a design, if they want the original dwg I have no problem with that - seen it so many times when they send back the PDFs we sent them for the next set of works and we have to take them forward (even worse, they send back TIFFs of what we sent them) - I'm looking at this more as an exercise of 'can I do that')

Edited July 7, 2023 by Steven P