Need to catch my students cheating

[Anonymous]

Hello there, my name is Nigel, and I currently teach engineering courses.

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

I am trying to catch my students, because I suspect a few may be cheating.

Is there anyway I can look to see where their inventor files originate from? Whether that be another students file, or one downloaded off of the internet. Or am I pretty much out of luck when it comes to catching them in the act of academic dishonesty?

I searched this up myself, and I only found answers pertaining to past inventor versions. I need answer specifically for inventor 2015.

Thanks in advance!

[via05306]

If you want to use the DuplicateChecker tool – created by Brian Ekins – download it first from this forum. The downloaded file will be a compressed .zip folder, inside it you need to locate an executable .exe file that does not require installation. This method is quite efficient because it allows you to review a large number of files simultaneously without opening Inventor. The program was last updated by user Alex Fielder to work with 2020 versions and up of Inventor.

To use the program, follow these steps:

1. Download the compressed program from the link provided in this forum.
2. Once the .zip file is downloaded, extract its contents.
3. Navigate to the extracted DuplicateChecker folder, then to the bin subdirectory, and then to the Debug subdirectory to locate the executable file DuplicateChecker.exe (93kB). Open this file.
4. Your computer might warn you that the publisher of this program could not be verified. The file is completely safe, so you can proceed to run it.
5. Once opened, a window called Find Duplicate Files will appear.
6. Click the Browse button to navigate directories and locate the folder containing the files you want to analyze. Once you’ve selected the folder of interest, press Accept.
7. You may choose a folder that contains multiple subfolders or subdirectories. If you want to analyze the contents of the selected folder as well as all its subdirectories, check the box labeled Process subfolders.
8. Press the Process button.
9. At the bottom of the window, a message reading Processing… will appear while the program analyzes the files. Once completed, the files with identical InternalNames will be grouped. Additionally, it will indicate which files share this number and in which directory or subdirectory they are located.
10. If the program does not find any files with the same InternalNames, no information will be displayed in the window.
11. When you are finished using the program, press the Cancel button to close it.

[mat_hijs]

@johnsonshiue Could you show how/where you can see this information?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Inventor files are all compressed files. The tool I use to compare two Inventor files is 7zip. Simply use Open Archive command or Extract command to decompress the content. You may compare the segment name, time, and file size. If you see similarity, there is high probability the two files are the same (or one is a copy of the other).

Many thanks!