Topic: AutoCAD Education Stamp mimic

[rhino]

Hi,

Anyone ever try to mimic the affect that the AutoDesk Education Stamp has to use it as a copyright tool?

ie: instead of the 'this drawing was produced by AutoCAD Education version' to something like 'this drawing is the copyright of company name'

I believe it can be done using a LISP routine thats saved with/within the dwg file

-Chris

[David Hall]

it could be done... but do you want it to be able to be undone?

[Crank]

Though I've never seen an Education Stamp, it's not that difficult to place a stamp and protect your data.
Attached is an example. (Sorry, I can't post the .lsp, because I've used some code that belongs to our company.)
Use at your own risk: Always use a copy of your drawing.

Nb.: For the position of the stamp I use the limits.
To use this in a script you can set a global variable with your companyname: (setq CompanyName "MyCompany")

[It's Alive!]

I use Fineprint with its watermark tool
http://www.fineprint.com/products/fineprint/index.html

[rhino]

it could be done... but do you want it to be able to be undone?

Well not really because the education stamp is very subtle yet really effective - but it would be nice to have that as an option...

Though I've never seen an Education Stamp, it's not that difficult to place a stamp and protect your data.
Attached is an example. (Sorry, I can't post the .lsp, because I've used some code that belongs to our company.)
Use at your own risk: Always use a copy of your drawing.

Nb.: For the position of the stamp I use the limits.
To use this in a script you can set a global variable with your companyname: (setq CompanyName "MyCompany")

Thats pretty cool - but the way it works is to create a block and put the text as a watermark - you should really look at an education stamp dwg its very transparent ie (allowing the user to change the drawing) and the watermark will only show up when its printed - if you copy the drawing entities to a full version autocad it shows you a warning and then has the same affect (education stamp watermark when printing) and so forth...

off course there are ways to get the stamp removed & also allow copying the entities without the stamp - but I won't post details of that here

[GDF]

Though I've never seen an Education Stamp, it's not that difficult to place a stamp and protect your data.
Attached is an example. (Sorry, I can't post the .lsp, because I've used some code that belongs to our company.)
Use at your own risk: Always use a copy of your drawing.

Nb.: For the position of the stamp I use the limits.
To use this in a script you can set a global variable with your companyname: (setq CompanyName "MyCompany")

Crank

Is your routine similar to DETER.VLX in the Free Stuff section of http://www.dotsoft.com.

[CAB]

That routine, at first glance, appears to create an mInsert with an anonymous block name and
zero for the array information.

[Crank]

My routine just creates an anonymous block that's not explodable. You can increase the protection is you nest it a random number of times in other anonymous blocks. The drawing size will only increase a little, because these blocks only would contain a pointer to the previous anonymous block.

But now you know this protection was done, it's probably possible to crack it if you just save the drawing back to an early release. Using  an MINSERT somewhere is also not a bad idea to increase the protection, because that command was introduced in a very early release of Autocad.

[VovKa]

Crank,

Code: [Select]

((lambda (ent)
   (entmod (subst (cons 1 "") (assoc 1 (entget (car ent))) (entget (car ent))))
   (entupd (last (last ent)))
 )
  (nentsel "\nSelect text: ")
)


[Crank]

VovKa,
Pesonally I don't care if somebode would change the text, to me it's more important to protect the data.
But you've got point: The text is a weak spot.
Of course you can explode the text (with wmfout > wmfin) like the burst command. (With the latest releases of Autocad a .TTF stays real text, so you better use a .SHX then.)
It's also possible to place the stamp as an embedded OLE-object, but that would be very slow.

As I said earlier: This was just an example how things could be done. If you want to make a project out of this, things can get very complicated.
Most users don't know any programming of Autocad so in most cases even a weak protection will be adequate.
It's possible to use complicated stuff to reach your goal, but often an easy solution is good enough: I wonder what you would have been thinking if there were 100 copies of the text on to of each other.

[Serge J. Gianolla]

There are places in the world where they scan a drawing and give you an acceptable CAD format for about 10 bucks per A1 size!

[VovKa]

I wonder what you would have been thinking if there were 100 copies of the text on to of each other.

of course i would use (while (nentselp....
i don't think one can protect the drawing with the help of Lisp.
maybe objectarx with its custom objects? but even they can be exploded

[rhino]

I wonder what you would have been thinking if there were 100 copies of the text on to of each other.

of course i would use (while (nentselp....
i don't think one can protect the drawing with the help of Lisp.
maybe objectarx with its custom objects? but even they can be exploded

Here's a storyboard of how it could be done:

1 - Get a lisp file to be loaded/created on opening of the drawing (can be done - saw some code on this forum - and that pesky LISP virus is also proof)

2- The LISP will simply check the TDCREATE or TDUPDATE variables and store it temporarily it will also limit the ACAD instance to 1 & be able to detect if the drawing data is copied to another drawing file currently open

3- The LISP will write a Plot Stamp Parameter file and set a variable to switch Plot Stamp to 1 - it will also check that the plot stamp is on when the plot command is invoked

the user can in effect modify the drawing as he wants - but whenever he prints there'll be that plot stamp

will try to work on some of the above code over the weekend but any pointers to get started would be great.

Here's a sort of proof of concept: http://www.cadfx.com/stampfx/ check the drawing revision bit