Topic: ReadOnly Drawing

[TJK44]

Is it possible to make a drawing ReadOnly except for the creator of the drawing?

[dgorsman]

Everywhere?  Password protection is the only thing that springs to mind outside of CADLock (?) which does things to the contents.

In your own system you could roll something together.  But how would you identify who the "creator" is?  Computer name?  User name?  What happens if the user name changes, or they get a new computer?  Eventually you end up back at some minor variation on the built-in password protection but with a lot more work.

You could also manipulate access rights on the folder location.

[TJK44]

Thanks dgorsman,

I wasn't sure if AutoCAD had any built-in feature for something like this. It does seem like more of a hassle than what it is worth.

[Gasty]

Hi,

The short answer is NO with plain AutoCAD, but you can add a digital signature to a drawing, that permit to know the owner, and any unauthorized change will invalidate the digital signature. 

Gaston Nunez

[elliottpd]

Let them open the drawing Read-Write, then flip it to Read-Only if they are not authorized for editing (whatever your criteria) with .NET code that you run via a DocumentIdle event handler. Something like doc.DowngradeDocOpen(False)

[Jeff H]

I have not tried it and could get around it easy enough with code but could lock all the layers and add a ObjectOverrule on layers and override close method and check if it is open for write and if so make sure it is still locked.