Cad software that protects IP
I work for a small family company in China.
Mostly doing manufacturing engineering.
The level of IP theft over here is astounding. And most don't consider it to be morally wrong either.
We're growing quite fast and are looking at employing some more Chinese engineers, to help with manufacturing design.
A serious potential problem though, is engineers staying for a few months, then leaving to work for a competitor, and taking the CAD drawings with them... (it's much easier to get a job, if you can also offer the IP from a competitor!!)
Is there a way to run Cad software across a network, so that only certain people can Export the CAD data? I.e. When an new engineer makes a new file, they are restricted to saving it on 1 hard drive on the network, They are also restricted, so they can't export the data. Also you'd have to allow them to open Cad files from that hard drive, but not copy files from that hard drive to an existing drive etc. Is this possible?
(Obviously, a trusted employee would have to have access to print or send the data off to the mold/machine shop etc.)
Are there any CAD systems out there that allow for this? We currently use alibre, but I'm doubting that it has this functionality. I'm guessing possibly a cloud based software could have something like this?
Obviously you'd still be reliant on the "trusted" employee not to leak the data, and the machine shop not to pass on drawings. But We've been here for a while, and have those people in place. (at least we hope so) It's more that we are about to employ new engineers, we don't know, with little track record...
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Cheers
AJ