How to Use Coreldraw

01634 290260 SOLAR www.solarlasers.co.uk LASER SYSTEMS LTD. CorelDRAW: The basics Overview There are many computer applications that you can use to drive a laser cutter. CorelDRAW is the most versatile and mastery of it will allow you to achieve the outstanding results from your laser system. CorelDRAW is a very powerful professional vector graphics package usually sold with other Corel products such as CorelTRACE and Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Some features will be familiar to those provided in similar applications such as Adobe Illustrator. CorelDRAW supports Windows shortcuts and is both configured with it's own additional shortcuts and can be customised to have additional shortcuts added. It has a vast array of import and export filters to allow you to work successfully with the majority of other applications you will encounter. Another advantage to be gained from using CorelDRAW is that it can be used to great benefit for a multitude of other tasks Teachers encounter in their day to day work. This manual for example has been produced in CorelDRAW. Learning how CorelDRAW treats the various objects you create and import is an essential element of your training. A glossary of CorelDRAW terminology is provided with this material and you can find further explanations in the Help screens. To begin this tutorial, let's take a look around the workspace. CorelDRAW has gone through many updates over the years and earlier versions will have some of the features located in different places to those described in this manual, however since Version 9 most of these have been standardised. The Workspace If you are entirely new to CorelDRAW or maybe you haven’t had much opportunity to use it in the past he first thing to do is to familiarise yourself with the workspace. At the top of the screen you will find the Menu Bar. The Menus contain a wide variety of commands to modify the characteristics of your workspace and the entities within it. Beneath the Menu Bar you will find the property bar. This is adaptive dependent on the object you select or the tool you are using and you should note the various options you can control with each tool you use or shape you create. On the left-hand side of the screen is the toolbox you use to create shapes and text with. At the bottom of the screen is the Status bar. This will tell you important details about the objects you select and is an invaluable guide to resolving problems. A number of Dockers are available to allow you to manage your drawings and modify the components you create. A Docker is a toolbar that can be opened and closed as you wish and either kept floating or docked at the side of your workspace and collapsed to allow you greater screen space. I always have the following dockers open: Object properties, Transformations, Shaping. I frequently open the Object Manager and Undo Docker for advanced control of my drawing. Page Menu Bar Property Bar Toolbox Rulers Dockers Status Bar Colour Palettes Configuring the Workspace Defining the Page Size You can create your drawings in any page size you find convenient however it is very important that when you print your file to the laser cutter that the page you print from represents the bed size of your machine. If it doesn't you will have no control over where the file is being cut. The page size can be set on the Property Bar: As the bed of your Universal laser cutter has been built to VL200 16” x 12” VLS2.30 16” x 12” Imperial measurements, you may find it simpler to set the VL300 24” x 12” VLS3.500 24” x 12” Units to Inches first before entering the dimensions. These M-300 24” x 12” PLS3.60 24” x 12” are the actual dimensions depending on the model you M-360 24” x 12” PLS4.60 24” x 18” have. V-460 24” x 18” PLS6.60 24” x 18” X-660 32” x 18” The rulers on your laser cutter have their origin at the top left- hand corner and you will find it useful if your CorelDRAW page has the same. This can be defined by double-clicking on the rulers and entering the value you set the page height to in the Vertical Origin. Note it is easier to keep the units in Inches when you do this. Nudge Keys The Nudge Keys allow you to make quick precise incremental adjustments to the position of selected objects. Select objects and use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move them. A Nudge is a movement by a defined amount. Double-clicking on the rulers opens the ruler options dialogue where the nudge amount can be defined. I recommend a value of 1mm is entered. You will also see options for Super Nudge and Micro Nudge. These will move a selection by a multiple of the Nudge value you defined. I recommend for practical purposes you set the Super Nudge to 10 and the Micro nudge to 2. A Super Nudge will then be 10mm and a Micro nudge will be 0.5mm. Depending on the version of CorelDRAW you have this can be set in the Property Bar when nothing is selected by entering a value in: 1.0 mm Note that the Super Nudge and the Micro Nudge factors cannot be set in the Property Bar and will be whatever factor has been defined in the ruler options. To use Super Nudge, hold down the Shift key as you press the arrow keys. To use Micro Nudge, hold down the Ctrl key as you press the arrow keys. The Toolbox Take a tour of the Toolbox. By default this resides on the left hand side of the screen but it can be moved anywhere else, sometimes inadvertently, particularly if you use a laptop computer with a touch mousepad! Select Tool Shape / Knife Tool Zoom Tool Freehand Tool Smart Drawing Tool Note the small triangle in the corner of some Rectangle Tool tools. Clicking on this opens a flyout with Elipise Tool other related tools. Polygon /Graph / Spiral Tool Basic Shapes Tool Text Tool Blend / Contour Tool Eyedropper Tool Outline Tool Fill Tool Interactive Fill Tool Drawing Basics Drawing with CorelDRAW is best achieved by breaking the items you are creating down into a series of discrete components that are then sized Click and Drag using the Transformation Docker and shaped with the shape tool and the Weld and Trim tools in the Shaping Docker. There are 4 basic tools used to create shapes: Freehand Tool Rectangle Tool Click, take finger off mouse button, Ellipse Tool When using move mouse then click again. Polygon Tool the Freehand Tool to draw a straight line you Select any one of need to click, then move these tools and the mouse without dragging then click again. Holding down click and drag your the Ctrl Key as you do this will mouse to draw. constrain the line you draw to Holding down the Ctrl key be horizontal, vertical or at as you do this 15 degree snaps between. Click and Drag Holding down the Ctrl key when drawing the other shapes will constrain the shape to be regularly proportioned, i.e. Holding down rectangles becomes a squares, an ellipse the Ctrl key becomes a circle and a polygon has as you identical sides. click and drag The rectangle and polygon objects you draw can be modified in these ways: You can radius the corners of a rectangle and you can turn a polygon into a star shape. If you select the shape you will see Control Points control points where the lines connect and at the mid point of the polygon lines. Using the Shape Tool, click and drag these. Dockers A Docker is a type of dialogue box that can reside on the screen to allow you quick access to commands, provide information about your work, to allow you to modify your work, to control your drawing in many ways. There are a number of dockers that you may choose to keep open at all times. They can be minimized to keep your workspace as large as possible but are readily accessible, and can be closed down if you don't use them very frequently. Dockers that are particularly useful and worth keeping open all the time are: the Object Properties Docker; the Transformation Docker; the Shaping Docker; the Undo Docker and the Object Manager Docker. Dockers are opened through the Window drop-down menu. Minimize Expand by clicking here or on the tab for the Docker you want to use. Dockers stack over each other as you open them The Transformation Docker The Transformation Docker enables us to modify the objects we create or import in a precision way. We can move objects to a precise location, rotate, mirror, size and skew accurately. Rotate Position Scale and Mirror Size Skew Anchor point The Shaping Docker The Shaping Docker lets you achieve the following things; Weld, Trim and Intersect. Late versions of CorelDRAW have added more functions to the shaping Docker that advanced users may find useful but of all the functions Weld and Trim will be found to be powerful tools that are the most useful. In each function you are given the option to leave the original Source object and/or Target object. Checking these tick-boxes when you use these functions will create duplicate objects. This is useful for advanced users with good planning skills and enables better productivity.

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