Find DWG Author or ways to detect Plagiarism

[jdostie]

Hi,

I am a teacher and I was wondering if there is a way to know who created a drawing (without asking the user to enter their name in dwg properties).

I have several students who “created” their dwg at the exact same moment (I noticed by using propdess or tdcreate). It is not enough for me to prove that it is plagiarism, but if I could also know the DWG Author, I would be very happy!

I also used Time command to compare, it was not conclusive.

I also tried "DWG Columns for Explorer Free" software, but author colum is empty

• https://apps.autodesk.com/en/Detail/Index?id=3277071542977019251&appLang=en&os=Win32_64

Thanks in advance!

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> I am a teacher and I was wondering if there is a

>> way to know who created a drawing

No, often discussed but without having a tool installed which watches the steps the user did and saves this inside the dwg-file there is no guarantee to know it's a plagiarism.

You might have a chance if the user 1 has made a mistake and you'll find a drawing from someone else with the same difference ... and in case you are sure it's not an interpretation thing of the job description.

>> if I could also know the DWG Author, I would be very happy!

You might find some system variables like e.g. ONLINEUSERID, you might be able to compare drawings (with some small program) which looks to the sort of the object creation.

But all that is very easy to manipulate like create a new drawing, use copy & paste to copy geometry from dwg1 to dwg2 or save as DXF and insert that DXF into a new dwg ... and a lot more which makes it impossible to find a proof for "this is a clone from XXX".

What you can do is to create exercises which are individual for each of your students. E.g the wall length = student-id * 0.155 and something like this. Then copy and paste does not work. The only thing which might help here (and at least is how you can control it) to build the complete task based on parameter and so make it easy to create variants.

- alfred -

[jwhite]

If you have control of the computer they are using, you can turn on the log file and see how each user produced the final drawing.

[LionelRKatz · Accepted solution]

I suppose you can use the Comparte tool of autocad with this 2 files and see if there is any diference too (at least one line or layer diferent maybe)

[pendean · Accepted solution]

Instructors I know ask the students to turn on the variable LOGFILEON and to submit that log file along with the assignment as proof of task completion. Try it next time, it's too late now to do much about it.

[jdostie]

I will try LOGFILEON method next time, thx!

[jdostie]

I did not know that function, I will definitely use it, thank you!

[dpaisH4FTG]

Hello,
A teacher here, wants to see if my students are not cheating (copying) drawing. What is everyone's process nowadays?

[pendean]

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@dpaisH4FTG wrote:

...A teacher here...

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Have you had a chance to look at what was discovered in the replies above yours yet?

More tips here https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-forum/how-to-detect-plagiarism-in-autocad-files/m-p/7785628#M... 

[pattyblack17]

Existen varias formas de detectar el plagio hoy en día. El uso de un detector de plagios permite comparar textos con millones de fuentes en segundos. También es útil revisar citas, estilo y coherencia del contenido. Combinar herramientas digitales con una lectura crítica ayuda a garantizar originalidad y credibilidad en trabajos académicos y profesionales de investigación y publicación responsable actual.