I've been working with Matt to develop the ability for users to protect (and/or encrypt) their macros for a particular hardware key or a group of keys. He just sent me an update for Version 10 that has a new command: /KEYOK

Here's the syntax: /KEYOK,ID1,ID2,,,,; where ID's are the hex identifiers for hardware keys that will be allowed to run the macro. Now...the macro can be encrypted using the /ENCRYPT2 command and only the ID's that are listed in the /KEYOK command will be allowed to run the macro.

Here's some samples:

/KEYLOK,AE1,AE2,AE3,AE4,AE5,AD,148; (only ID's in list can run macro -- put the command at the top of the macro)

-OR-

/VSTR,10,'1F8';
/KEYLOK,AE1,AE2,AE3,AE4,AE5,AD,$S(10),148;

With this example, a string variable can be used to pass an identifier to the /KEYOK command. The value of the string could be read from a file, etc...

This new command offers a lot of flexibility to anyone that writes macros that they want to protect.

I am just curious, what kind of macros are you writing that you would want them to be protected? What discipline do you use General Cadd for. Are you going to offer macros for sale?

If someone gets ahold of a protected macro couldn't they just edit out the /KEYLOK line in the macro?

Yeah Eric, I guess more sophisticated users could edit out the /KEYLOK line but my reason for encrypting is as much to prevent screwing up the functionality of the macro as it is to copy protect any 'proprietary' programming. My partner and I have had a package written in macros available since 1992 back in the Generic Cadd days for industrial gasket fabricators. Our website is www.gaskcadd.com. It is written entirely in the General Cadd Macro Language and requires a custom hardware key to run. Recently we've had some custom work that we would like to limit to just a few users without having to get a custom hardware key and this is what Matt came up with. I think for the casual programmer/developer, it is a great tool. What do you think?

NOTE: Either /KEYLOK or /KEYOK will work. Matt anticipated possible typos since the device is known as a KeyLok and the command is supposed to indicate that these "Keys are OK". My use of both in my original post show how easy it is to do....oops!!