CorelDraw X4 Review Part1

Outline Line Width

One of the issues I have had with Corel over the years is their lack of representation into the awards, engraving and sublimation industry. So although I always like to accentuate the positive I will have to start off with a negative. This negative goes along with this lack of discussion with us. By default now CorelDraw’s line width is .007. This creates a headache for people like me because my phone and my email are going to be inundated with people who are going to draw a line and find that their machine is going to raster the line and not vector cut it. There is an easy fix for this but alas I really wonder why we have to go through this.

To fix the issue requires us to go to our default settings in CorelDraw. Your default settings are found at TOOLS | OPTIONS. Figure 1 shows the options dialogue box that is displayed.

Figure 1

Next we need to change our Default Graphic option so that anytime we draw a graphic its default line width will be .001 or .003 (hairline). Make sure that the “outline” section is selected as per the red box in figure 1. Next select the “edit” button as per the blue box in figure 1. Figure 2 shows you the box that appears when you click on the edit button. You will notice that the “Width” by default is .007. We need to change this to “hairline”. To do this we need to click on the pull down menu as per figure 2 and select the “hairline” setting. Once you have changed the line width you can then click on the “OK” button.

Figure 2

Once we have changed the line width we need to save this setting as a default. To do this requires that we select the document branch as per figure 3. Click the “Save options as defaults for new documents” check box as per figure 3. Seeing we only want to save a “style” setting than we need to uncheck all the check boxes except the “styles” box. I like to do this because if we have changed something else and forget about it those settings may be saved also. In this case we are only saving the line width and nothing else.

Figure 3

You will now be able to draw a graphic such as a box and the line width will be a Hairline. The hairline will than become a cut line to the laser machine.

Tables

One of the features that a word processor possesses is the ability to easily create tables. Tables are an excellent way to organize data easily into predefined cells.  In CorelDraw X4 tables have become a standard feature. This is a feature that I have wanted for a while. CorelDraw defines tables as

… “A table provides a structured layout that lets you present text or images within a drawing. You can draw a table, or you can create a table from paragraph text. You can easily change the look of a table by modifying the table properties and formatting. In addition, because tables are objects, you can manipulate them in various ways. You can also import existing tables from a text file or a spreadsheet.”

Creating tables in CorelDraw is quite easy. The table command can be found in the TABLE menu. Figure 4 shows you the location and the commands that are available to making tables.

Figure 4

To create a new table all you need to do is to click on the “Create New table” command as per Figure 4. Figure 5 shows the command window that comes up. In the window you have the ability to tell the wizard how many rows and columns that you want. You can also give the actual size of the overall table/ Figure 5 shows that I want to create a table that has 3 rows, 4 columns. The table is to be 4 inches in height and 3 inches in width.

Figure 5

Figure 6 shows the table that is created when we click on the “Ok” button in figure 5.

Figure 6

The one thing that hopefully is apparent is that we can use this command to create a grid cutout for a badge layout. For example if we want to create a number of 1 by 3 plates that fill up a 12 by 24 plate we can use the Table command to create the gird cutout if we wanted to cut the badges out. Figure7 shows the information that I have to placed in the “Create New Table” command. I have created a 24 by 12 with grid cutout.

Figure 7

Figure 7 shows us that we can quickly create a series of cut lines for our group of 1 by 3 plate.  Now this is not something new as we were able to do this in previous commands. However the command is now in one command window not scattered around.

Okay lets us get back to tables. Once we have created the table we than start entering in our text or graphics into each table. To start entering text into each cell all you need to do is to select the Text tool – click on the “A” in our toolbox – then go over and when you are inside the cell click on it. Figure 8 shows that when I click in the cell I get a paragraph text box that forms to the cell (dotted box in figure 8). You will also notice in the figure 8 that the cursor is located at the top left and is ready for typing.

Figure 8

Once you start typing the text will form into the cell (again this is nothing really new from X3) as per figure 9

Figure 9

As with any word processing program that has tables you can select either separate cells or a row or column of cells. The problem with selecting cells is you cannot do it with the standard pick tool. To select a cell you need to either double click on the table or select the table tool in the tool box – see figure 10.

FIgure 10

Note: make sure that the table is selected with the pick tool. With the table command active we can now select a cell. When we approach a line in one of the cells our mouse image on the screen will turn into a black arrow as per figure 11.

Figure 11

If you click on the line, which in this case is on the left side of the table, you will select the entire row of cells. If you click on the top or bottom cells you will select the column. You may also right click on the line and you have all the commands that you need to work with a column or a row. Figure 12 shows us the right click menu that is available (you can also select these commands by going to the TABLE menu).

Figure 12

Figure 13 shows the entire row selected. You will notice that the selected cells are highlighted with a series of blue lines at a 45 degree angle.

Figure 13

When you select a row or column of cells you now have the ability to either insert more cells or delete those selected cells. You can either right click on the selected cells or go to the TABLE menu located in the main file menu. Figure 14 shows the commands. The fact that the commands are in black as opposed to gray means they are active.

Figure 14

If you just want to select one cell you can click on the Table tool in the toolbox and then right click on the cell that you want to work on. You can than go to SELECT | CELL as per figure 15.

Figure 15

With cells selected I have the ability to change the attributes of either one or a group of cells. Figure 16 shows that once I have a cell selected I can change the attributes of that cell. As with many commands the property bar  (located at the top of the page with the menus) will display only commands that are available to the table tool – red box in figure 16.

Figure 16

You will notice in Figure 16 that I have changed the fill in the cell to the color of pink, the line type to red and with a line thickness of .016.

There are some other features that are available to tables. You can split tables into a number of smaller rows or columns. You can also merge cells together so that you can make bigger cells.

One of the commands that you can do is place an image inside a cell. Placing this image in the cell will keep it in the middle of the cell. To place an image in a cell we need to import the logo into CorelDraw. Do not worry about resizing it we can do it later. To place an image in a cell you need to click on the image with your right mouse. Now while holding down the right mouse button you can drag the image over the table. As you go over individual cells you will notice that that each one turns light blue. Figure 17 shows the image over the cell. When the cell is blue if you let go of the mouse button the image will drop into that cell.

Figure 17

Once you are over the cell that you want you can let go of the mouse and you will be presented with a menu as per Figure 18. Select the “Place Inside Cell” command that is highlighted in red as per figure 18.

Figure 18

Figure 19 shows the image placed inside the cell. You will notice that it is bigger than the cell. We can resize the image to fit the cell.

Figure 19

Figure 20 shows us the resized image in the cell. To resize the image all you need to do is selected the image as you would any other objects and then scale it down or up.

Figure 20

Figure 21 shows the finished plate. I have added colors into the cells so that you can see each cell. As you can see the table tool can help in controlling layout areas that you are working in.

Figure 21

Working with the table tool now adds some added control over your layouts. You can now create certain layouts such as plaque layouts easier with the table command in CorelDraw.

The other important point about the table command is that we can bring in table information from other programs such as Microsoft word or Word Perfect. This is important when a customer has already done all the setup for us. Why recreate the wheel when they have already done it for us. The idea is to make less work. I have always had issues in regards to working with customer supplied tables and getting them into CorelDraw. We could never do it before but we can do it now.