O.K. - Weird question that hasent come up before...

Hi all -

I haven't posted in a while, but I have to on this one. I did a google
search and turned up nothing, so I figured I'd ask.

Long story short (maybe) - I was helping out a friend of mine who was under
a lot of work pressure to get a project out, and I ended up generating a
couple components for an assembly he was doing. No big deal, but just
before I sent them to him I remembered about the damn feature properties.
Is there any known way to remove my name from the properties of the sketches
and features??? I don't want my name associated with this project and don't
want to get him in any problems. This was fairly complex and there are a
lot of features, so re-creating the whole thing will be a very big PITA....

I'd just like to remove my name, but it doesn't allow for that. Can it be
done? Anyone who comes up with a way would be a life saver and will get a
6-pack of thier favorite ale sent to them!

Thanks...

 

The only way I can think of is to use a Hex editor.

Be sure to backup all files before attempting. When replacing a string be
sure to replace with an equal number of characters.

Note I've never tried to do this so not sure how if it will work.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.


John Layne
www.solidengineering.co.nz

 

Will Ecosqueeze take out this info?

 

Don't know having never used it, but I sincerly doubt it.

John Layne
www.solidengineering.co.nz

 

Wild guesses:

-Round trip using feature recognition (never seen it work, just heard about
it)?
-Round trip to parasolid, if a dumb solid is good enough?

JM

 

If you can open the file as in an editor, like programmers do, you can
do a simple search and replace, and it will be bullet proof.

Bo

 

No. At least it never has for me.

 

Dear IYM,

Well you can do a trial by saving the files once on the other machine
which is having the SW. This will change the last saved by name but not
sure that this will also change the author name from the property of
the file.

Regards

Deepak Gupta

 

Thanks, but no - Tried sneaking and sending it to him as an IGES, but he
needs the ability to modify it, so a dumb solid won't work for him...

Thanks anyway though....

IYM

 

Tried that and unfortunatly, features keep thier creator, date created and
date modified values when "saving as", even on another machine. The only
time it changes is if you drag and drop a feature's sketch into a new part
file. I still have to go back and create the feature and such. It'd be
nice if I could fix this issue by being able to drag and drop features from
one part file to another....All I'd have to do is drop the features in order
from one file to another. Would take me about 10-15 minutes doing one at a
time, rather than hours re-creating it from scratch....Seems this info is
entrenched pretty good in the part file....

Thanks

IYM

 

I think this data can be edited, but I don' think you can use a regular
hex editor to do it (at least not without some really specific special
knowledge). SolidWorks corporate has tools that can read contents of
files in a human readable format, but those tools are not publicly
available.

Something that would maintain the parametric capabilities but shield the
names in the features would be to use an inserted part.and lock the
reference. If you need to make a change, change the original part and
unlock the reference. The base part feature would get the name of the
person who creates it.

Someone else has already mentioned the option of using FeatureWorks to
rebuild the part if it is made from fairly simple extruded and revolved
features. Also, rebuilding parts is not as complex as creating them
originally, you can have two windows open and drag features from one
window to the other, or copy/paste sketches.

Or you could just hope that no one looks. Most people don't.

 

Thank you - Thank you - Thank you!!!!

Had never used a hex editor before, but gave it a try. Downloaded "Hxd" hex
editor freeware from http://mh-nexus.de/hxd/ and tried it out. Copied my
part to the desktop and opened it in Hxd. It is rather time consuming (took
1/2 hour to do) but still a hell of a lot quicker than redoing it. The only
thing I'll mention is that getting my name out was tricky. If for example,
you want to remove "jsmith" from the "created by" of features, the search
for that only revealed two instances that had nothing to do with features.
You need to search through the whole file looking for "j" to see where else
it could be. In doing this I noticed that every instance of the name was
seperated with a dot (eg: c.r.e.a.t.e.d..b.y....j.s.m.i.t.h. ) as you'd
expect with hex. The good news is that the file seemed to have it entered
in once (as I noticed it started with "$string") for a set of features and
then each feature referenced the string. It was in the file this way about
6 or 7 times, and I'm sure it had different meanings for different things
(sketches, etc) and not just the features but I just changed them all for
good measure. But as John said, you have to replace the name with the same
amount of characters (eg: "j.s.m.i.t.h." became "a.a.a.a.a.a" throughout
the file) or the file becomes corrupted.

On a side note, I couldn't beleive the data that was in there in between the
line so to speak. For example, I had e-mailed this to my work to print it
out (as they have a large printer) and sent it back home again. In the file
were directory structures from my company! (I must have saved.) I also had
renamed the file at one point, and the old file name was embedded in there
too! Basically, a history of every modification, file name change, file
structures, etc that the file went through.

Sorry, this may seem like old news to some, but was an eye opener for me as
I never played around with hex editor before and thought it was interesting
to say the least!

Anyway, Thanks John and let me know where to send the beer!

IYM!!

 

No safe way and probably no unsafe way either. The files are packed
away in MSoft's structured storage. Changing anything without the
proper tools is just a waste. Had you thought of it prior you could
have set up an inocuous account on your computer like XXX and done
everything there. Even then, templates and things of that nature would
have an ID in them.

Remember, no good deed goes unpunished.

 

Actually it worked using a hex editor on the SWx file as I mentioned in
another response post, and you may be right that it may still be entrenched
somewhere deep in code to those with the specialized tools. However, in
this case, the normal Solidworks user when right clicking the properties of
any feature, will find it now displays "Created by: aaaaaaaaaa" (too late
at night to come up with something creative)

This method does leave open possible office pranks however! Was thinking if
a co-worked messed up something on a design of mine, I could make it say
"Modified by: an idiot"

IYM

 

Ok, I was wrong. Thanks for having the persistence to actually do it. I
had tried it with no luck, but after a couple of the hints you provided
(and a better hex editor than I had been using) I was able to make it work.

The area where the right text existed looked like this:

....
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
ÿÿ....moPart_c..
...ÿÿ....moHeader
_cÿÿ....su_CStri
ngArray..ÿþÿ.m.a ***
..t.t..€..ÿþÿ.ÿÿ. ***
....suObList..ÿÿ.
....moLogs_c..ÿÿ.
....moStamp_c....
....pðDÿþÿ.C.r.e.
a.t.e.d.....ÿþÿ.
P.a.r.t.1..€...€
....


The "ÿ" formed about 30 lines in the hex editor. You will see a m.a.t.t.
in there after the word StringArray with the asterisks, which was the
one I changed and it worked. I tried it on a second part, and was able
to find the place more easily. It is about 2/3 of the way down the file.

I'm glad to know this now. I've been wanting to be able to do this for
years. I had spent all this time thinking this couldn't be done. I'm
always glad to be wrong about stuff when its good news.

 

No worries, address on my website.

If sending to New Zealand is a problem I'll probably attend a SolidWorks
World in the next 20 years or so you can buy me one or two then

John Layne
www.solidengineering.co.nz

 

It gets a little more complicated if the standard planes were created
from a template created by a different user, but you can change that
too. There may be 4 instances of the StringArray text, but it seems like
its only the last instance of it that matters. It is followed by a
series of user names. I found 4 user names in one part. Not just
creators but also editors.

 

Daisy, to quote IYM today answering John Layne, "I'm glad to know this
now. I've been wanting to be able to do this for years. I had spent all
this time thinking this couldn't be done. I'm
always glad to be wrong about stuff when its good news."

Lets see. First time I used a hex editor, admittedly on the Mac, it
was about 1986. Lots of interesting things are possible with a bit of
effort and study.

Bo

 

I would suggest anyone with a passing interest in privacy/security open up a
SWX file sometime and take a look at the M$oft structured storage of the SWX
file and the unreal amount of info stored therein.

I opened a template (drwdot) file that I currently use. The amount of
information retained in there is mind boggling. I would also suggest,
totally unecessary !!
I usually create drwdot templates, from an existing template, by doing a
"save as" and ticking the create a copy box. I then modify the template and
save out sheet format related to that drwdot file. I had created these
parent template years ago when working at another company.

Lo and behold, there was all the stuff in there, path names, directory
structure, names of people who had modified the document etc, - all from
that company. I know Solidworks is wedded to M$oft and uses M$oft
structured storage but, surely this is just adding useless padding to what
are already bloated files.

I remember a while back PC World (NZ) did an article on this same nonsense
that is found in Word documents. The PC World writer got a snotty reply back
from some facless person within Microsoft. In the next issue the writer
extracted then published the names of author, PC information, file structure
at MS server, printers - you name it he had the times dates names and alot
of other info - dam near down to the brand of toilet paper they were using.
Very amusing
Also Scary.

--
Neville Williams
Z-Axis Design - NZ
"remove the KNOT to reply"

(I must have saved.) I also had

 

I remember a while back PC World (NZ) did an article on this same nonsense

Then you connect to the internet and your Windows computer ignores any "don't
talk to strangers" admonitions.