Watermarking?
in Other
I will be creating some some drawings that we would like to watermark to limit copying. I can create a version of our company logo that is pastel, but I cannot figure out how to get it to display properly. At the moment, I am trying to do this on a drawing page that has a spreadsheet that I copy/pasted from Excel.
My current logo watermark is made up of BricsCAD entities, such as polylines and areas filled using the Solid hatch. If I put the logo in paper space, it covers up the spreadsheet. If I put it in model space and then have it in a viewport in the page, the spreadsheet covers up the watermark.
I do have another method I could use. I have a PDF editor that can add watermarks. But, I would prefer to not need to do this extra processing, and would prefer for the watermark to exist in BricsCAD.
Can anyone think of a way to put a watermark on my drawing that has a spreadsheet?
-Joe
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Comments
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What about making an image with your logo/watermark, use a PNG and make it 50% opaque. Insert the image into a drawing, size and position as required and then WBLOCK the image. I haven't tried, but the only catch would be weather or not BricsCAD and AutoCAD support the transparency/alpha channel in the image. For client logos I use this same procedure, mind you there is no transparency and I am using a JPG.0
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How does watermarking limit copying? You can't water mark a CAD file so I am assuming you watermark the hard copy or the pdf: However with a hard copy or a pdf the person still has to draw over the line work?I have had a completely open-door policy for the 30 years I have been a Civil Engineer - if someone wants a copy of a detail I will give it to them, even from an opposition company. I have always found that I have got more back than I have given. If I can avoid designing or drawing something that has already been done I will do it - Google is a powerful tool. If necessary I will acknowledge what I have scrounged.Life is too fast to worry about someone nicking your drawing (unless it is of a secret invention - but then it should not be out in the public domain in ANY form).Then again... perhaps I am such a crap draughtsperson that no one wants to nick my drawings!
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To make the logo image I would print it to an image format, PNG would be nice if your PDF program can do it, open the image in GIMP, GIMP can open a PDF and edit it if you can only output the logo as a PDF, use the select by colour tool to select and erase the background, then adjust the transparency of the image. Then export the image to a PNG and insert into BricsCAD and see what happens....0
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Thanks for the ideas, I will try them.We normally only send out PDF's for job quotes, though we do give out DWGs to actual customers.We know we have had competitors get quotes for jobs from us, for the purpose of quoting their own work. So, if I water mark, if they want to show drawings to their customer, they will have to do some re-drafting.I will share the story, from perhaps 20 years ago, where we knew for sure this was happening regularly with one competitor So, my company deliberately under-quoted a large project, knowing that the competitor would just accept our quote and equipment choices for the system. It worked. The competitor got the job, but lost a lot of money.-Joe0
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If you use PDF Creator, then it has options to watermark prints. An alternative would to use PDF Toolkit to add a watermark as a post process. I'm sure there are lots of other ones out there that will do the same.
Regards, Jason Bourhill CAD Concepts0 -
The usual post-processed PDF watermark is added as an object and can be easily removed with a PDF editor. Even when the document is secured it is hard to totally lock it down.
However, if the PDF is a bitmap and not a collection of vector objects then you can be pretty well assured that removing a watermark that is "underneath" the drawing will be at least very time consuming and at best not worth the effort. Some PDF printers (including PDF Creator) will optionally save-as a TIFF. Once the drawing is "bitmapped" into a TIFF, print that file as a PDF and you should be good to go.0 -
The process of inserting the watermark as an image in model space worked. I just had to change its draw order to be behind everything. However, it is certainly better to have it in paper space. But, paper space items are drawn last, so they overlap everything.I tried editing the image's properties, to turn on transparency, but that has no effect on the image I attached in paper space. The image is saved as a PNG, which does support the alpha channel for transparency. But, perhaps when I created the PNG, it did not indicate that white is transparent. But, I don't know how to get the image to have all the white portions become transparent.Thinking again about the paper space option, I realize even if I have the white portions transparent, the other portions may cover up the drawing. Perhaps I could change my watermark so that it is only drawn with fine lines, and has no filled areas.Does anyone know how to make the white portions transparent?-Joe0
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PDFiLL (pdfill.com) has a watermark option (there may be others), allowing text based or image import watermark insertions. Once saved as .pdf, I don't believe it can be deleted / edited.
I also understand their free tools version offers this.0 -
I did find out how to create a PNG that has transparency. The key is that the PNG has to be created with an Alpha channel (i.e. a separate "color" that is the transparency map). I used BullZip printer driver to create the PNG, and it had an option to create that alpha channel. But, as I suspected, the opaque parts of an image in Paper Space do cover modelspace objects, if you have paper space objects set to print last in the page set-up.It seems that many PDF printer drivers have the option to insert a watermark. That is likely how we will proceed.On a related note, our company is starting now to give out less information in our typical preliminary quotes. If they want more detail, then they need to either give the deposit, or specifically purchase our engineering time, and then they are free to take the design work to any company they want.Thanks for all the replies,Joe0
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Joe I'll second the PDF watermark and save as image.I use Bluebeam and that has a watermark.I just type the company name in large 25mm± letters using an outline font, set its transparency to 20% (I think) and place in across the sheet in at least 2 places.I feel for those that have to tender a design and construct job.I've done a few minor road, carpark designs for a local company which has then been submitted with their quote and occasionally they get adopted by another who was successful in their tender.0
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