Proprietary Issues

I provide drafting services mostly for architects that are not CAD savy. Quite often they ask me to forward my AutoCAD files to engineers and other consultants concerning projects I am working on with them (the architect).

Since these files contain many objects and blocks I've developed I'm concerned about giving these away, or worse having someone get ahold of my developed files and then taking my client away.

The files could be stripped down but this is a lot of hassle and could inadvertantly result in omitting important information.

How do other professionals look at this issue and how do they handle it. Thanks.

 

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Like the others have stated, we all share files. Those of us that are
professionals simply don't steal other peoples work. I have asked and been
given permission to snag the occasional block or note from someone else's
work, and have also done the same for others. However the occasional "Bottom
Feeder" does rise to the top. The copy write laws and your contract are
there to protect you and your client. The copy write and contract won't
stop anyone that really wants your stuff, but if someone complains about it,
that is a pretty good indicator that you may not want to do business with
them.

Paul

Quite often they ask me to forward my AutoCAD files to engineers and other
consultants concerning projects I am working on with them (the architect).

concerned about giving these away, or worse having someone get ahold of my
developed files and then taking my client away.

inadvertantly result in omitting important information.

Thanks.

 

The suggestion about putting the message in blocks would make it annoying only. I think it would discourage some folks because people who steal others' work are essentially too lazy to do their own and erasing all those messages from exploded blocks might make them decide it wasn't worth the effort.

U.S. Intellectual Property Rights protect all of us as long as we do the right thing and share only.

 

Hi Andy

Not sure of your exact situation/contract, but are you sure you own the
drawings & their content?

In certain situations the client owns the design/details & is free to
replicate the structure.

In a case I worked on a Rugby stand was designed for a town in the Welsh
valleys & next year a duplicate one was spotted in the next town up the
valley.

All the company could do was write a letter from their lawyers saying they
took no responsibility for it's stability.

Dave F.

 

I charge an extra fee for providing .dwg files. I figure that if I am saving
an engineer, or someone else work, I should be compensated. The compensation
comes from my client. I also have a statement of how the files may or may
not be used that I get signed by whomever the files are going to.

One the other hand, I have asked many surveyors to email me plats and topos.
This is a great help. I have not had anyone charge me or my clients for
their .dwg files, but I have had to sign several use agreement forms.
Construction drawings, however, can be used illegally. A plat is just a
drawing of something that is already there.

 

Not familiar with copyright laws outside the US but Andy could always beef up the work agreement to more clearly outline who owns what.

As to Dave F's comments: Governmental entities seem to act the same way no matter where they are. If you do a job for our state facility people, they insist they own the drawings even though this usurps Federal law. No one has challenged them in court on this yet. but someone will....In the meantime, they give YOUR drawings to some other AE who slaps their title block on it and calls them their own ...with the full knowledge of the state.
All this for a fee that they beat you down on....

 

Bit of a split mind.
You charge for sharing drawings, you use other drawings without paying.

Someone had to draw it, measure it all in the field, maintain the drawings
etc.
That costs nothing?

compensated.<
How much are those people payed for the job?
The same amount as you?

In our country we(construction) get much less as an architect, we get approx
3% of building costs, architect 10-12%.
(it's just a state of mind in this frog infested country, archtects are
importand, the rest should be payed as little as possible)
Is it too much asked to use the layout of the building from an architect
(altough most drawings are of very poor cad-quality) to put our construction
in?
Why would we redraw everything while its already done, exchanging files is
one of the powers of CAD.

But we are running off topic now.
Maybe the question were it all started from should be reviewed.

You may have created the blocks in the drawings, do you own the idea behind
it?
Did you invent a new type of toilet, sink, door, whatever?
Sharing files is there to smoothen the pre-building proces.
It's also there to bring down building costs.
If we start charging for it than the costs will go up again.

Jan

 

<< A plat is just a drawing of something that is already there. >>

It doesn't get on paper by itself. And it is the intellectual property of
the surveyor.

 

Acutally, I am not an architect. My fees are very reasonable - based on the
square footage of the house, not a percentage of the construction cost.
Also, I would pay or get my client to pay for other's files that I need, if
they charged. As I mentioned, I have not been told there is a fee involved
with any of the files I have requested from others.

 

What I meant is that it would be hard to illegally use a plat on a different
project. I didn't mean to imply that it doesn't take time or skill to create
the drawings.

 

I'm sorry I fussed. Sensitive subject..... 8^)

Steve

 

I am working on the same exact problem. My company is required, by
contract, to provide our AutoCAD files to a customer. The contract was
signed 3+ years ago and they have not asked for drawings until now - now
they want them all yesterday - I have no idea how many there are.

The problem is that we have worked hard to customize how we do the
drawings so that we are very efficient. This includes the use of blocks
and custom VB apps that automate most of the work involved. We don't
necessarily want our customers, or competators, seeing and getting ideas
off of how our drawings are built.

There are a couple of steps that I have figured out that will not affect
what is in the drawing, but will greatly reduce the information about
how the drawing is built.

Currently my process consists of:
blank all proprietary block attributes
this keeps them from showing up in the next step

explode all blocks
I use a custom 'burst' like VB app so that all blocks
are exploded in one shot across all layout tabs
'burst' changes attribute info to text


delete all attached images

delete proprietary or unnecessary layers

purge all
be careful - blocks within blocks are not exploded
and not purged

digitally sign the drawing
I use a custom digital certificate generated on a linux
running OpenSSL

Most of this process can be very automated
clearing attributes
exploding blocks
delete images

purging blocks
digital signing

Only some must be interactive
deleting propietary layers


All of these steps are done on a COPY of the drawing that is to be sent
to the customer.
The original needs to remain intact so I can easily make changes.
Each time a drawing is sent to the customer, it must be reduced first.
Even if it is the same drawing with minor changes.

Documenting the changes will help to keep some consistancy.


If you send an email, I'll see what I can do to send you some of the
routines that I have developed to automate this process.


Have a great day!

Tom Austin
Stine Consulting

 

I'm of the mind that it just doesn't matter. As others have said, swapping
files is SOP for most of us, and we don't worry about this.

I've also spent a lot of time developing a whole system of blocks, menus,
and so forth which make our work more efficient. I use various measures to
protect the total CAD setup. I don't make any effort at all to protect
what's in an individual drawing file.

Getting one block from a drawing file -- or even a number of blocks --
doesn't get you the totality of the block library, or the system of placing
them. It's very difficult to imagine an unscrupulous person taking over your
area of expertise by cribbing a few things out of a drawing. It's also
difficult to imagine that any particular group of blocks, or any layer
naming scheme, is all that revolutionary.

Even if it were possible to steal your client based on a drawing file, it
seems extremely unlikely. The engineering consultatnts who are working for
the architect do not want to do architectural drafting, believe me. Of all
the engineers that I've ever hired, as an architect, I've never met a single
one who had the slightest interest whatsoever in moving into the field of
architecture. I'd bet that any of them would get a huge laugh out of any
such suggestion. They each do a little slice of the work, and make a lot
more money (proportionately) from that slice than the architect does for
taking responsibility for the whole job. They seldom pay any attention to
anything outside their narrow field of interest, and it's often hard to get
them to even do that. Limited work, limited responsibility, good pay: that's
the way they like it.

I don't mean to be harsh, but in my experience that's the attitude of
consulting engineers. If they wanted to be generalists, or take bigger
responsibilities, or expand into ever-changing different types of work, they
would have been architects instead. It's a different mindset. They've
already made their career choice, and I have never in my life met an
engineer who envied the job of an architect.

I'd forget the whole thing. If there are spectacularly marvelous blocks in
the drawing that you feel are important trade secrets, then you might
explode those. But I doubt that you'll do anything except alienate people if
you start demolishing your drawing files to the extent that Tom Austin
describes. Exploding all the blocks, for instance, can increase the file
size enormously, degrading the performance and making the drawing horribly
difficult to use.

In my opinion, you'd be more likely to lose your client if all his
consultants started complaining about the God-awful useless files you're
delivering to them, if you started blowing everything to bits. The architect
can probably find another drafter easier than another consulting engineer.

 

For customers who were known to share data (or simply hand them over to
competitors) we used to plot to a PLT file and then use PLT2DWG. (rendering
them fairly useless)

 

After reading your post I did some quick research. Unfortunatly I
didn't find that this method supports multiple paperspace layouts.

Thanks for the tip!

Tom Austin
Stine Consulting

 

You should also talk to lawyer before charging for DWGs. This can cause you to be liable for the accuracy of the information and can be an implied warranty. Just another thing to consider.