I've noticed that this has been viewed many time but nobody
has responded. I'm looking into implementing PDMWorks also and
would like to know this. I'd even be interested to know if you can
insert a watermark (workaround or true) into any drawing file that
only shows when printed.
But for any type of document? I don't think so, you'll be at the
mercy of the application that created the document.
I know some printers could do this for you. They look for a special
code in print stream. I have no personal experience with these
printers, so I cannot recommend any.
Thanks Jeff - that seems like the best method. I don't know
if they've added anything like that in '09 or not. My question with
this method and others similar is if the "watermark" appears in the
background and does not interfere with any dimensions, notes, or
geometry.
We're looking at this same situation to be able to stamp our
SolidWorks drawings during a batch plot routine with the job number
and date. Our printers don't have that capability built in... so
what we're trying currently is using EDrawings to print the
drawings, and utilizing an vb.net app to put a stamp on the drawing
in a predetermined location.
Basically the program is going to:
1. Make an image that has the job number and date in it for this
print run, and save it.
2. Open the drawing in EDrawings
3. Stamp the drawing with the image.
4. Print the drawing
5. Close the drawing without saving.
We're wanting a stamp, not a true watermark.. but you probably use
the same method for a watermark if you could either:
1. For dynamic stamping (like current date or job) use a program to
create an image that supports transparency, such as png or gif and
put that image on the drawing with the same method I mentioned.
2. If your image stays the same, you could just create it as a gif
or png and save it off in a safe location and just reuse the image
each time.
I'm not sure what file formats EDrawings can accept for stamps.. so
that'd be something to check into. And EDrawings can open many
different types of files, and it's free, so it gives you some
flexibility as far as users printing drawings that don't have
SolidWorks.
We should be giving this a go hopefully sometime next week, and
I'll post in here what we do if it works or doesn't work.
Just as an update to our progress with stamping drawings at
print time... we're still working on the VB code to generate the
image on the fly with our job number, but the stamping part is
working just fine. Opening the files to print in EDrawings and then
stamping them in a set location with the image is working
beautifully. Right now we're doing it using a jpg image. So it's
looking to be an effective way to watermark or stamp drawings.
The text is a bit blurry, but using VB.NET we're able to generate
an image derived from text (job number and current date) and then
using EDrawings, stamp that image into a specified location on the
drawing.
We went into our solidworks drawings and added a little box on the
drawing border to mark off the space that the stamp will be in to
keep people from putting anything in it.
Like I mentioned before, if you were doing something like a logo or
some kind of image that didn't change every time you print, your
code will be A LOT simpler. The hardest part was figuring out how
to make the image from the text string.
We also need to watermark our prints via eDrawings. We
thought about adding some custom coding using eDrawings but one of
our programmers suggested we use a printer driver that has
watermarking capabilities. He came up with the Zan printer driver
which works great on his machine. The only issue I see is the user
has to choose the correct driver and settings to get it to work.
We just want a stamp that reads "Uncontrolled document. Check
revision prior to use."
You should be able to write a quick little program to stamp
and print a file using edrawings. I'm still playing around with
ours, but it works.. I'm not happy with the image quality that vb
creates, but for you, you wouldn't have to create the image
dynamically, you could just save the image and reuse it, so you
shouldn't have that problem.
We had the same issue and opted to create a stamped PDF file
(via an add-in).
Every time a drawing goes through a specific state change, the
server generates a PDF with a specific watermark and puts it into
the appropriate project folder.
For some people that's really easy.. but that depends completely on
your printer. I know for us, we have 2 regular printers that don't
have that capability, a copy station that does, and a KIP that
does.. but we also can print drawings directly down to the shop
bays and they don't have that capability on any of their printers.
For some companies that are smaller and are guaranteed to always
print drawings on a printer that has that capability, that would
work great.. but if you aren't 100% sure that your employees will
always be printing on a printer that can watermark, I wouldn't
suggest doing it that way.
whenever you adjust the printer settings for watermark option in
the printer preference, it will watermark any printout,
the employee doesn't have to check the watermark option, because
its already checked in the printer preference,
and here is another solution for you people, if you would like to
watermark drawing files and save them, you can use PDF printer
software
it has also the option to watermark, so you would get :
PDF file with your defined watermark logo.
I think for me its the best to make it in this easy way
better than suffering days trying to write a macro or something
which will watermark the drawings. if somebody found a solution
please let us know
and here is one of the most nice software for printing PDF
its freeware (without watermark option)
Yeah.. I understand that the employee doesn't have to check the
watermark option every time... what I was saying was that for us, 2
of our office printers that are the primary printers for 90% of our
drawings don't even have that as an option.. they can't do
watermarking as a printer preference. And all of our printers down
in the shop bays are the same model or older as those, and they
don't have that option either.
We didn't want to have duplicates of all our drawings, so we're not
saving out PDFs as we go.. so that's why we had to write a macro to
watermark and print the drawings. And we're using edrawings as the
print client so we don't have to have people with licenses of
solidworks just to print drawings and because it's stamping feature
made watermarking very easy to program.
Anybody have any comments on this?