Understand · Everyday · 3 min
Stamped, signed, closed and certified: what each one proves
Four different things get called “signed off”. They say different things, and only one of them can be checked by somebody else.
On a project, “signed off” can mean four quite different things. DatoMark makes three of them, says plainly what each one is, and doesn’t make the fourth.
- A stamp
- Words on the sheet, such as APPROVED or FOR CONSTRUCTION, with the date it was placed. It says what somebody meant the sheet's status to be. It doesn’t show who placed it, and anyone who can edit the file can place or remove one.
- A signature mark
- A picture of your handwriting placed on the sheet, with the date, or the date and time, written under it if you ask. It’s like ink on a printed sheet: it shows somebody meant to put their name to it, proves nothing about who drew it, and doesn’t notice if the drawing is altered afterwards. The time is the one on that computer's clock.
- A closed comment
- In the review, a comment's status says whether it has been dealt with. That’s a note about the comment, written by whoever closed it. It isn’t an approval of the drawing, and it isn’t tied to a particular revision of the sheet.
- A certificate-based digital signature
- Made with a certificate from an authority others trust, it can show who signed and that the file hasn’t changed since. DatoMark doesn’t make one. If you need one, export the PDF and sign it in a program built for that; anything changed afterwards breaks it.
Which to use
- To say what status a sheet has: a stamp.
- To show somebody has seen it and agreed: a signature mark with the date, on a PDF you export and keep with the project's records.
- To keep track of what’s still to be dealt with: comment status in the review.
- When a contract, a regulator or a client needs it to be provable: a certificate signature, made outside this program.