Catia, CREO watermark

Question

Is it possible to watermark a CAD model created in CATIA or CREO? I am new to this area and would like to watermark my CAD files (some in CATIA, some in CREO) so that if it is leaked, I will know its my file. It should be a dynamic watermark with my company name & user who download the file from my server.

Please help.

I disagree, it is clearly a development based question, however it could be edited to be more appropriate. — tremor, Mar 13 '19 at 15:01

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 13 '19 at 14:58

The CAD Model once produced and loaded to your server for download, is a static, binary file. It CAN be watermarked by the authoring software, but these watermarks will be static as well.

A dynamic watermark is possible with image files such as .jpg and .png formats when accessed using a server side processing language such as PHP and GD. See for more info: http://php.net/manual/en/book.image.php

What you are looking for would be a way for an on-access application on the server side to "unpack" the CAD binary (.dwg?) - embed a watermark, and then deliver the contents to the downloader.

I found this GitHub repository that can watermark PDF files using PHP - https://github.com/binarystash/pdf-watermarker - If something like this exists for .dwg format I am unaware of it's existence.

Short answer: I don't think it's possible without finding, or writing a specific piece of software for this purpose, but it is theoretically possible.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 02 '19 at 16:46

If it is a prt or catpart file I don't think you can watermark it. I am not even aware of static watermarking for prt files.

However, you can try this in creo (not sure about CATIA) Create two parameters say, COMPANY_NAME and DOWNLOADER_NAME and add some placeholder values as {comp_name} and {down_name}

Then before a user downloads the file edit the binary file search for {comp_name} and {down_name} and replace them with your company name and downloader name. I am showing how the binary file looks like in notepad++, so that you may get an idea

Now if a file gets leaked you can take a look at its parameters and know who downloaded it(assuming the person didn't change the parameter manually)

But remember that the no of characters before and after editing should be the same. So if you want to have a longer name use a longer placeholder (and if you get a shorter name fill it up with blank spaces).

I hope this was helpful

Catia, CREO watermark

2 Answers2