Preventing unauthorized prints

[dlanguell]

One of my jobs is document control. My boss wants me to find a way to prevent unauthorized people from printing AutoCAD drawings - but they should still be able to view them on the computer.

I finally figured out how to set drawings to read only, but can't find anywhere to prevent print/plot for AutoCAD .dwg or .dwf
Can I prevent printing?? & how do I do it?

Dawn
using AutoCAD 2005 on Windows XP

[jaberwok]

Can I prevent printing?? & how do I do it?

Don't give them any printers.

Sorry. I know that doesn't help. It's been a long day.

I believe it is possible with .pdf files though.

[BrenBren]

One of my jobs is document control. My boss wants me to find a way to prevent unauthorized people from printing AutoCAD drawings - but they should still be able to view them on the computer.

I finally figured out how to set drawings to read only, but can't find anywhere to prevent print/plot for AutoCAD .dwg or .dwf
Can I prevent printing?? & how do I do it?

Dawn
using AutoCAD 2005 on Windows XP
I don't think you can do it with AutoCAD. You can do it with pdf's, but that would be a real pain to do with all your drawings. You would have to plot them to PDF and then edit the securities within Acrobat to do it.

You could put something on the drawing that says COPY (or something) and only have it removed (or turned off) by authorized people when printing final copies. You could then publish them to DWF and download the free DWF viewer from AutoCAD and only let the unauthorized people look at the drawing with dwf viewer. They would still be able to print them, but it would have COPY on it so your would know it was unauthorized.

In fact, if these unauthorized people don't have AutoCAD on their computers, that might be the way to go. You can even use a plot stamp when plotting to DWF and then turn the plot stamp off (or change it) when plotting final copies.

[JASONM30395]

Have you tried undefining there PLOT command?
(of course this would only work if they don't know how to redefine it. Should be no problem if your dealing with engineers.;) )

[Will_Munson]

Make two PDF files of the same DWG.

One PDF would have an 128-bit "Author" password that would disable the print function. The other PDF would also have a "Author" password with the print function enabled.

Depending on how you are managing your documents will dictate whether the PDF files are one sheet/page per PDF or a single multi-paged PDF file containing all the sheets/pages. You may want to add a logical name to the file like "Project_ABC_Release_2_Printable.pdf " and "Project_ABC_Release_2_ViewOnly.pdf ".

Based on your document management system, both files would be indexed and the printable PDF's could only be accessed by the user with printing privileges. All others would only have access to the "view only" PDF's.

[tyeelaw13]

even with all the incryption and security, if you give them the ability to open and view a drawing, there will always be a way to print something. Simply by using the print screen button ( and some add on software), they can print anything on their screen. It might not be to scale, but it could still be printed.