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

[CyberAngel]

Have you tried turning off the "include layer information" option in the plotter properties? That should make it harder to use the PDF, since it removes a lot of information (and makes the file smaller). I haven't seen this suggestion anywhere in this thread.

 

Another option is the legal route. If these people are stealing your work product, they're breaking the law. Even the threat of litigation may put a stop to it.

Edited July 7, 2023 by CyberAngel

[Steven P]

Quiet week last week... I get bored and thinking about stuff I shouldn't be doing. Got work things to do as well mind,

 

So with this, I tried a quick LISP.

- Start an undo marker

- Overkill the drawing to speed things up

- Explode dimensions

- scale everything to 0.999

- Explode line types to their displayed parts (dashes etc) (bearing in mind Big Als comment above about file size)

- Explode polylines to lines and arcs

- Convert every line, circle, arc, ellipse, in the drawing to a thin solid hatch, delete the original lines and any hatch borders created to make the hatches - leave just the hatches ('lines' in my out-the-box installation can't be snapped to but still look like lines in the PDF). This takes some time depends on drawing size. Need to ensure the hatches are the same width as the lineweight, and that everything is on the same layers and colours as before

- Explode the texts to hatches. Can't edit a hatch as text. This takes time if there are lots of text, so might be better to split each text to component letters and only hatch a few of them randomly. See how busy I am this week to do this. Might be even more fun!

- Reverse layer names (2nd word only, "My Layer" -> "My relaY")

- End the undo marker

 

That will annoy most people and noting that this would be better done on components rather than say site layouts, maps and plans. I'm not sharing the LISP, it is likely to come back and bite me from a client sending me a PDF and a note "Fix this". This idea is the best I can think of noting the above - no need to change any settings, plot styles and so on, can't forget to change them back again (end of the week rush, plot the project files, go home, don't change settings back type of thing). Still quite annoying and to make a useable drawing would need a lot of redrawing and work.

[SLW210]

Exploding things is pretty redundant IMO, if the PDF is Raster, converting with a Raster to Vector program, it will all be exploded anyway or the program will make it back to a dashed line and text is pretty easy with any thing that has a decent OCR ability.

 

If there are any relevant items or dimensions, very easy to rescale to appropriate scale.

 

I have mentioned on here somewhere about the bad drafters I have encountered over the years, one drew dashed, center, etc. linetypes as you would on the draft board (small individual lines), I quickly fixed those.  Another override dimensions was his favorite among other things. Nothing drawn to the actual size/dimensions. Even worse was the .dwgs we got from the PROE guy, individual linework and all on layer 0. All easy enough to overcome. A good deal of LISPs out there to overcome a lot of it.

 

I have remade as a .dwg a good many of scanned blueprints, scanned electronic drawings, even scans of scans and photos of drawings and scans. It just takes a bit of patience and some time. If willing to purchase software programs, even less patience and time. If it's anything the person receiving it needs any information at all and clarity as well, no problem replicating the design.

 

Simply making it a raster PDF with some distortion should deter the lazy (maybe an option to make non-essential parts a little less focused), if willing to overcome that, where there is a will, there is a way.

 

A good well written contract is the best deterrent IMO, even then it's not 100%. Even a Patent Application requires some disclosure of exact information and the law is all that can protect your design.

 

My waterjet software does a pretty good job on raster images, particularly if they are sharp with a plain background. Added noise to the background would probably help a lot for software program conversion.

 

 

[Steven P]

I get what you are saying, and mostly where there is a will there is a way, but also where there is a budget there is a time constraint, where there is an IT guy there is a lock on software you can install. Just got to add barriers to stop a straight copy, add time in there to fix and maybe the budget will say 'no'.

 

An easy conversion vectors to hatches, will do the trick without changing anything else like page setups - no need to think about converting any settings them back. We've all been there and done that redrawing and making good lots of drawings, and probably sworn at the colleague or client who has sent a drawings as you describe saying 'fix this'.

 

If they are wanting to copy things time after time then the legal route would be the way to go. However for the legal route you would need to show they copied the drawing and not "we just measured the part and drew it from that" - so you'd still want to mess with the drawing a little and if those errors are carried through you can show it is a copy and not a redraw. Different X and Y scaling perhaps, dimension over rides, angle any hatches slightly 0.1 degrees or something, where you can show the lawyers "that was on our original, that is on there, and this and that, coincidence?". Some messing will still be needed i think.

 

[Steven P]

On 7/24/2023 at 11:36 AM, Steven P said:

That will annoy most people and noting that this would be better done on components rather than say site layouts, maps and plans. I'm not sharing the LISP, it is likely to come back and bite me from a client sending me a PDF and a note "Fix this".

 

PDF today, "Fix This" request. 35,500 xref background images. Thanks however thought of that idea.....

 

 

 

(delete, delete, delete, probably not important but CAD has take about an hour to convert the PDF, detach xrefs, etc to make a 500kb drawing .......)