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[pohltergeist]

Hi All,

When I search on problems with text and editing from Autocad most are struggling to get the text to be editable, but I'm trying to do the opposite: make it uneditable.

The problem posed to me is to find a way to maintain the truetext font so that the text displays clearly on user's screens, but make the text be completely uneditable. The easy solution would be to switch to one of autocads crappy simplex fonts (as other firms do) but the bosses have a particular love for a truetext font.

This is needed as being able to edit stamped drawings easily makes the Engineers twitchy

Any ideas?

[Steve]

Will flattening the PDF drawing (with the option to NOT recover selected) not secure the file enough for you?

[pohltergeist]

Does flattening not just make any markups permanent? I need to make text editing impossible without destroying the document.

Also, locking/securing the file doesn't do it for us either as our clients sometimes need to be able to edit the document to add a stamp.

[Steve]

I've attached a simple PDF file I created in AutoCad using the Bluebeam plugin.  Are you able to edit the text on it?

[pohltergeist]

I can edit all of the text except the logo.

[Steve]

Edit - as in actually change / rearrange the text? What method are you using to do that in Bluebeam?  Try editing this copy.

[pohltergeist]

Within the edit menu > content > edit text. Seems to work on the last one you sent as well.

[Steve]

OK - try this file.  I messed the text up a bit in testing.

[pohltergeist]

Hmm, well I'm not able to edit the text but I still have the problem that all editing is disabled, we need to have the markup menu still be active.

[Steve]

LOL.  OK - getting closer.  How about this file?

[pohltergeist]

Heyyy, we might have a winner here, mind sharing your magic?

[Steve]

Sorry - went home for the day before I saw your last response.

Here is what I did.

1 - Plot the Autocad file to PDF (I use the Bluebeam plug-in, but I'm guessing any DWG to PDF method would work)
2 - Open the PDF in Revu (I use Revu Extreme, so don't know if all these steps are available in Revu Standard)
3 - Go to Document > Security > Change Permissions
4 - Check "Enable Permissions to Limit Printing and Editing" and add a password and confirm
5 - Check "Allow Printing" (assuming you want to allow printing)
6 - Check "Allow Changes" and select "Filling in Form Fields and Adding Markups" from the popup
7 - Uncheck "Allow Copying Text or Graphics" and "Allow Extracting Content for Accessibility" (You could probably leave these checked if you want to allow it - it's Step #6 that mainly handles what you want, I think)
8 - Click "OK"
9 - Close and save the document and reopen.  (It may prompt that the changes will take effect when you save.  For me they didn't.  I had to Save then close and open the document for the security changes to take place)

I've attached a screen shot of the settings in the security dialogue.

Also, there is a BATCH security setting so you could apply these settings to multiple files at once if you have lots to change.  And in the Security dialogue you could save your custom settings to use over without having to select all the settings again.

Hope this work for you!