copyright info / e-mailing dwg files

I don't have a company, I'm self employed. I'm sure it varies by industry.

The only correct simple answer is, "it depends".

You have to think what you're protecting. Is it the confidentiality or authentic aspect of the information on the drawings? Are you concerned that somebody will use the drawings and then produce similar drawings, for purposes of deception? Could these drawings be used to mislead a customer or some other organization? Or is the information itself on the drawings supposed to be confidential?

Some of my customers are engineering firms and their clients (industrial customers) require engineering drawings at several steps during the design and construction process. Many of them specify AutoCAD format, usually 2000.

I can think of one argument for NOT giving them. I used to work for a company that had purchased a smaller competitor. The small office had a product line that they thought the larger firm should allow them to keep making.

So they took some drawings from the larger company as models and converted their product drawings so that they looked like the big company standard. The problem was that they weren't "official". It wasn't a bad product line, but they had simply faked things like engineering approvals and so forth that they had not done. IIRC, they had also come up with dummy part numbers that looked real but weren't issued the correct way under the new rules.

They didn't really intend to be deceptive, I think they just wanted to show the main office that they could be professional. It didn't really have that effect.

good loyal customers can get copies of anything they want. the ones that take our prints & send them out for bids get modified versions. ( I work for a sheet metal shop) I do allot of field measuring & this info is up to the contract winner to produce. I stamp the drawings with "verify all dimensions" and just give a few general dimensions.

-- be cool,

Longshot

Can't you convert the AutoCAD to some other format, such as PDF?

I did that this week. I worked on one drawing and sent it back. Then somebody who was not involved wanted to look at it, but they were not at a machine with AutoCAD. They asked me for a "Word version". I suppose I could have converted it to a .bmp and then inserted into Word, but I just sent it to a .pdf file instead.

Steven

You mean you're breaking the long standing tradition of borrowing details from other companies?!?! Shame, shame. lol

On the serious side, and I mean no disrepect to your work, but is there really anything that incredibly unique about your blocks/details that it warrants so much worry?

As with everything, it depends on your exact circumstances, but frankly, this topic seems to be much ado about nothing, generally speaking. If you send me a paper drawing, I can duplicate it, likely within a few hours, so what's the point of going through so much to prevent me from using your drawings? Seems like alot of wasted effort to me.

Liability issues, regarding someone modifying your drawing, would be a different animal, of course.

good point tom.

i mean from a "its my design/method of design (for the blocks) so keep your hands off" (digitally speeking focourse). i mean anyone, of course could copy a paper drawing, you can't prevent that, but a digial autocad drawing is so much more powerful.

PDF is a great alturnative

Rock >