Adding a water mark

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

         I work for an electrical contractors and we are having issues with some of our clients plagiarising our designs. We have our own title block and some spiel saying if this drawing is copied you can be persecuted, but they seem to just print the pdf and cover up our title blog and re scan and send off the drawing. I was wondering whether there was a way to have our company logo as a water mark large enough that if they tried to cover it up it would cover up large amounts of the drawing as well.

[h_s_walker]

Welcome to the Forums

Does your client actually need the drawing or can you send it as a PDF or DWF?

[pendean]

As long as you share electronic files, you cannot do much about them.
Except to digitally sign these documents and have strong contractual agreements with those folks that you can take actions against them.

A watermark in AutoCAD/LT is just a TEXT object you can write across your screen in large sized letters to obscure what you want: do that now, there is no magical tool to do it for you in the program. And the recipient could probably erase it.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

We only send PDF of drawings out they are using autocad 2017 to convert them back to a DWG or printing them off and covering up our title block and scanning them and sending them on

[pendean]

So? before AutoCAD2017 you could buy a PDF to DWG converter for US$40, which they probably already did and have been using for years.

No one needs AutoCAD/LT2017 to convert PDFs to DWG files.

Again, there is no technical fix to a contractual/legal problem between you two: talk to your legal counsel and your liability insurance company about how to protect yourself properly.

You can start sending them DWFs or PNG raster images to hold them off a bit longer. But they can buy software to convert these as well.

[stevetamplen · Accepted solution]

Hello ftselec, and welcome to the Forums!

You should be able to create a "WATERMARK" layer, make the text cover the whole drawing, say from corner to corner, then set the transparency to 50%, and lock the layer.

Then when the PDF is created, it will always show the watermark, and if they want the drawing without it, they have to purchase it from you.

Of course, once that drawing is printed, it could get into unwanted hands, but at that point you would probably be able to track who had access to the unmarked drawing.

Additionally, there are security measures that can be set on the PDF itself.

Here is what the HELP file has to say about security:

"About Passwords and Encryption

Current security requirements are increasing due to the nature and sophistication of the threats encountered online.

Beginning with AutoCAD 2016-based products, the ability to add passwords to drawing files was removed. Instead, we recommend that you purchase an encryption product that meets current industry standards and is updated as needed. For AES symmetric encryption, security experts currently recommend the 256-bit protocol. For RSA asymmetric encryption, they usually recommend the 2048-bit protocol as the minimum for general security and the 4096-bit protocol for internet transactions.
It is recommended that you consider one of the following alternatives to protect drawing files that contain sensitive information:
Output the drawing as a PDF file, and add a password to the PDF
Package the drawing in a ZIP file, and add a password with a secure external utility
Use a third-party password and encryption utility with, for example, 256-bit AES technology or equivalent
Protect the drawing behind network permissions
Protect the drawing behind Autodesk 360 or other cloud provider permissions"

and

"Commands for Protecting and Signing Drawings

Commands

DIGITALSIGN (Command)
SAVEAS (Command)
SECURITYOPTIONS (Command)
SIGVALIDATE (Command)
System Variables

SIGWARN (System Variable)"

I hope that helps.

If you have any more questions about this topic, or the information I posted, please feel free to post back and I will be happy to assist you!

If my post answers your question, please click the "Accept as Solution" button on the appropriate post. This helps everyone find answers more quickly!

[stevetamplen]

@Anonymous

Have all your questions been answered? Is there something else I can do for you?

If not, please mark the post (or posts) that helped you as Accepted Solution(s). This helps other Forum users find answers more quickly!

If you need more help with this issue, please post back and the Community and I will be happy to assist you!

[stevetamplen]

@Anonymous

I have marked post number 6 as the Accepted Solution. This is so that other Forum users can find answers more easily.

[Anonymous]

Is there a way to do this to a whole project as a batch, or do I need to go to each individual drawing and add it.  I'm curious because I have a project with 100+ drawings so a batch command would be very useful.  Thanks.

[steven-g]

No batch commands in LT, you could run a macro, but you still need to physically open each drawing to run the macro. You might get away with a windows CMD batch file and a startup script but by the time you have that figured out and working, then you would probably be already finished doing it by hand for 100 drawings.

[pendean]

That needs to be a printer driver setting if you want automation.