Topic: Read only ACAD files

[danny]

I'm wondering if anyone knows or have seen autocad files where the ojects and lines are embbedded in the file, read only?  A file where it is not possible to manipulate the drawing, besides turning layers on and off and drawing over layout.  The reason I'm asking is because I'm working on a very large retail project where my firm is doing the overall shell of the retail spaces and each tenant will higher their own architect to layout their spaces.  We would like to have our main file read only so other architects cannot manipulate our drawings.  Can DWF's be brought back into AutoCAD?  We don't want to use images because it requires having to insert them at the correct scale.

Mahalo,

[MP]

DWF files can be reverse engineered, search these forums for DWF.

http://www.cadlock.com might be more what you're looking for.

[danny]

thanks MP...

[MP]

(posted from Sage).

[Keith™]

I use a neat little trick that without a program the user cannot explode the drawing .... I do this .....

Create an anonymous block of the entire drawing, scale it to a wierd scale, mirror it so it has a negative scale in the X or y plane create a new anonymous block of the mirrored scaled anonymous block and minsert it with row spacing of 0 and column spacing of 0.....then scale the block down the original scale....

It seems like alot to do, but it really chucks a wobbly if the user tries to explode or insert the original anonymous block....
I am not sure about 2004+ but in most 2000 & 2002 installations if you try to explode an anonymous block that has an anonymous block with a negative scale, it will cause AutoCAD to lock up...
Not pretty but effective....

[MP]

I've done the minsert thing just as you've noted but never thought of using an anonymous block with those calisthenics.

[hyposmurf]

Someone's going to get a few grey hairs trying to explode a block like that

[CADaver]

Sounds like somebody here needs to write something that'll do all that.

[MP]

I would be extremely surprised to hear Keith does that by hand every time.

In our work such a program would have to mindful of xrefs, custom objects, clipping planes, multiple viewports etc. ... "normalizing" these issues (let's call that flattening) would have to be performed first. Once flattened the drawing could then be, let's see, let's call it obfuscated.

[CADaver]

I would be extremely surprised to hear Keith does that by hand every time.

So would I, that was a hint to share  

In our work such a program would have to mindful of xrefs, custom objects, clipping planes, multiple viewports etc. ... "normalizing" these issues (let's call that flattening) would have to be performed first. Once flattened the drawing could then be, let's see, let's call it obfuscated.

We rely so heavily on very large XREF's I don't see us using it that much for the bulk of our clients.  But we have a couple that ... let's say ... are candidates for "punitive" engineering, if you know what I mean.

[MP]

That was a hint to share

And I was acknowledging it.

We rely so heavily on very large XREF's I don't see us using it that much for the bulk of our clients.  But we have a couple that ... let's say ... are candidates for "punitive" engineering, if you know what I mean.

One thing you can do is perform a WMFout*  from an existing drawing and then do a WMFin in a blank one (or blow the contents of the existing one away first); *poof*, instant punishment.

* For each viewport.

[CADaver]

That was a hint to share

And I was acknowledging it.

We rely so heavily on very large XREF's I don't see us using it that much for the bulk of our clients.  But we have a couple that ... let's say ... are candidates for "punitive" engineering, if you know what I mean.

One thing you can do is perform a WMFout*  from an existing drawing and then do a WMFin in a blank one (or blow the contents of the existing one away first); *poof*, instant punishment.

* For each viewport.

That'd work.  One of our IT whiz-kids ported up an old binary plotter driver, so what we do now is plot to the binary in color, then import the raster image into an empty drawing, run a raster-vector routine, and purge.  You wind up with everything on layer 0 with a color and everything a vector including text and dims.

[MP]

Indeed.

I used to do a very similar thing with dxb. I wrote two programs: one orchestrated a dxb plot of each viewport (hidden lines removed), layer by layer (this way layering was retained), then did a dxb import on optimized dxb files. The second app was the one that optimized the dxb files in the background. While the dxb format supports polylines, AutoCAD writes everything as individual line segments. For example a circle might be represented by 72 line segments. My optimizer would find those 72 contiguous elements and convert them into a polyline. It was fun, because Autodesk's own published dxf format documentation is incorrect (tho it's real close); I had to crack the format with a hex editor.

I did a very similar thing using wmf, and incidentally, showed both programs to Autodesk representatives who came a visiting my office (they used to do this about once a year or so). About a year later they came out with an express tools flatten based on .. wmf. Coincidence? S-u-r-e. Credits? R-i-g-h-t.

[CADaver]

layer by layer (this way layering was retained),
...
For example a circle might be represented by 72 line segments.
...

That would be the "punitive" part as far as I'm concerned.

[MP]

Indeed. Mine processed text | attribs separately (i.e. retained as text), but it sounds like you prefer the full lobotomy ('course, that makes sense given the original post).