Getting started with CorelDraw

• Touring CorelDraw interface and drop-down menus

  Part	Description
  1. Toolbox	Provides tools for creating and modifying objects in the drawing
  2. Document tab	Lets you quickly move between open documents
  3. Title bar	Displays the title of the currently selected drawing
  4. Menu bar	Contains pull-down menu options
  5. Toolbar	Contains shortcuts to menu and other commands
  6. Drawing window	The area outside the drawing page bordered by the scroll bars and application controls
  7. Property bar	A bar with commands that relate to the active tool or object. For example, when the Text tool is active, the text property bar displays commands for creating and editing text.
  8. Inspector	Displays task- and tool-related controls, such as command buttons, options, and list boxes for modifying drawings
  9. Rulers	Horizontal or vertical bars marked off in units and used to determine the size and position of objects
  10. Document palette	A bar that contains color swatches for the current document
  11. Drawing page	The printable area inside the drawing window
  12. Color palette	A bar that contains color swatches

•  

Setting up the Page in CorelDraw

• Click on New
• A dialogue box will appear
• Make your desired selection

Using Rulers, Grids and Guidelines in CorelDraw

• Ruler
  • You can display rulers in the drawing window to help you draw, size, and align objects precisely. You can hide the rulers or move them to another position in the drawing window. You can also customize the ruler settings to suit your needs. For example, you can set the ruler origin, choose a unit of measure, and specify how many marks or ticks appear within each full unit mark.

• Grid

  • The document grid is a series of non-printing intersecting lines that you can display in the drawing window. You can use the document grid to precisely align and position objects.

    You can customize the look of the document grid by changing the grid display and grid spacing. The grid display lets you view the document grid as lines or as dots. The spacing lets you set the distance between the grid lines. The spacing options are based on the unit of measure for the ruler. For example, if the ruler unit of measure is set to inches, the spacing options are based on inches.

    If the ruler unit of measure is set to pixels, or if you enabled the Pixels view, you can specify the color and opacity of the pixel grid. The pixel grid is a series of intersecting lines that show you individual pixels in a document. For more information about the Pixels view, see Viewing modes. By default, the lower-left corner of the document page is aligned with pixel grid to help you create pixel-perfect objects for the web.

    You can also have objects snap to the document grid or the pixel grid, so that when you move the objects, they align with the grid lines.

• Guideline
  • Guidelines are lines that can be placed anywhere in the drawing window to aid in object placement. In some applications, guidelines are known as guides.
  • There are three types of guidelines: horizontal, vertical, and angled. By default, the application displays guidelines that you add to the drawing window, but you can hide them at any time. You can also use objects as guides.
  • You can set guidelines for individual pages or you can set guidelines for the entire document. For more information about local and master guidelines, see Local layers and master layers.
  • You can add a guideline wherever you need one; however, you can also choose to add preset guidelines. There are two types of preset guidelines: Corel presets and user-defined presets. Examples of Corel presets include guidelines that appear at 1-inch margins and guidelines that appear at newsletter column borders. User-defined presets are guidelines whose location you specify. For example, you can add preset guidelines that display margins at a distance you specify or that define a column layout or grid. You can remove guidelines at any time.
  • You can have objects snap to the guidelines, so that when an object is moved near a guideline, it can only be centered on the guideline or lined up on either side of the guideline.
  • Guidelines use the unit of measure specified for the rulers. For information about ruler settings, see To customize ruler settings. By default, all guidelines are shown at the drawing scale specified in the Edit Scale dialog box. You can choose not to display guideline coordinates at scale, but rather to show the actual position of a guideline on the page.

Knowing the toolbox

The toolbar

The toolbar, which appears by default, contains buttons and controls that are shortcuts to many of the menu commands.

• Click this button	To
  	Specify a magnification level
  	Choose a view mode
  	Group objects
  	Break a group of objects
  	Disable editing on selected objects
  	Enable editing on selected objects
  	Align objects in relation to other objects
  	Mirror objects horizontally
  	Mirror objects vertically
  	Move object to the top of the stacking order
  	Move object to the bottom of the stacking order
  	Move object one level up in the stacking order
  	Move object one level down in the stacking order
  	Show or hide rulers
  	Show or hide grid
  	Show or hide guidelines
  	Select a snap method for aligning objects
  	Access the Get More dialog box to download other creative tools
  	Show or hide the Inspector panel

Toolbox

• Pick tools
• Edit shape tools
• Crop tools
• Zoom tools
• Curve tools
• Drawing tools
• Rectangle tools
• Ellipse tools
• Shape tools
• Text tools
• Dimension tools
• Connector tools
• Effect tools
• Transparency tool
• Eyedropper tools
• Fill tools
• Variable Outline tool

The toolbox contains tools for drawing and editing images. Some of the tools are visible by default, while others are grouped in flyouts. Flyouts open to display a set of related CorelDRAW tools. A small flyout arrow in the lower-right corner of a toolbox button indicates a flyout. You can access the tools in a flyout by clicking the flyout arrow.

• Locate tools

The following illustration shows all flyouts in the default CorelDRAW toolbox and can help you locate tools more easily.

Pick tools

 

	The Pick tool lets you select, size, skew, and rotate objects.
	The Freehand pick tool lets you select objects by using a freehand selection marquee.
	The Free transform tool lets you transform an object by using the Free rotation, Free angle reflection, Free scale, and Free skew tools.

 

Edit shape tools

 

	The Shape tool lets you edit the shape of objects.
	The Smooth tool lets you smooth curved objects to remove jagged edges and reduce the number of nodes.
	The Smear tool lets you shape an object by pulling extensions or making indents along its outline.
	The Twirl tool lets you create swirl effects by dragging along the edge of objects.
	The Attract and Repel tool lets you shape objects by attracting nodes to the cursor or pushing nodes away from the cursor.
	The Smudge tool lets you distort a vector object by dragging along its outline.
	The Roughen tool lets you distort the outline of a vector object by dragging along the outline.

 

 

Crop tools

 

	The Crop tool lets you remove unwanted areas in objects.
	The Knife tool lets you slice objects, groups of objects, and bitmaps along any path you specify.
	The Virtual segment delete tool lets you delete portions of objects that are between intersections.
	The Eraser tool lets you remove areas of your drawing.

 

 

Zoom tools

 

	The Zoom tool lets you change the magnification level in the drawing window.
	The Pan tool lets you control which part of the drawing is visible in the drawing window.

 

Curve tools

 

	The Freehand tool lets you draw single line segments and curves.
	The 2-point line tool lets you draw a straight two-point line segment.
	The Bézier tool lets you draw curves one segment at a time.
	The Pen tool lets you draw curves one segment at a time.
	The B-spline tool lets you draw curved lines by setting control points that shape the curve without breaking it into segments.
	The Polyline tool lets you draw lines and curves in preview mode.
	The 3-point curve tool lets you draw a curve by defining the start, end, and center points.

 

 

Drawing tools

 

	The Artistic media tool provides access to the Preset, Brush, Sprayer, Calligraphic, and Expression tools.
	The Smart drawing tool converts your freehand strokes to basic shapes and smoothed curves.
	The LiveSketch tool lets you sketch naturally with intelligent stroke adjustment.

 

Rectangle tools

 

	The Rectangle tool lets you draw rectangles and squares.
	The 3-point rectangle tool lets you draw rectangles at an angle.

 

 

Ellipse tools

 

	The Ellipse tool lets you draw ellipses and circles.
	The 3-point ellipse tool lets you draw ellipses at an angle.

 

Shape tools

 

	The Polygon tool lets you draw symmetrical polygons and stars.
	The Star tool lets you draw perfect stars.
	The Spiral tool lets you draw symmetrical and logarithmic spirals.
	The Common shapes tool lets you choose from a full set of shapes, including hexagram, a smiley face, and a right-angle triangle.
	The Impact tool lets you create graphic effects in a style inspired by comic books and contemporary illustrations.
	The Graph paper tool lets you draw a grid of lines similar to that on graph paper.

 

Text tools

 

	The Text tool lets you type words directly on the screen as artistic or paragraph text.
	The Table tool lets you draw and edit tables.

 

Dimension tools

 

	The Parallel dimension tool lets you draw slanted dimension lines.
	The Horizontal or vertical dimension tool lets you draw horizontal or vertical dimension lines.
	The Angular dimension tool lets you draw angular dimension lines.
	The Segment dimension tool lets you display the distance between end nodes in single or multiple segments.
	The 2-leg callout tool lets you draw a callout with a two-segment leader line.

 

Connector tools

 

	The Connector tool lets you draw straight, right-angle, and rounded right-angle connector lines.
	The Anchor editing tool lets you modify connector line anchor points.

 

Effect tools

 

	The Drop shadow tool lets you apply a drop shadow behind or below an object.
	The Inner shadow tool lets you apply a shadow inside an object.
	The Contour tool lets you apply a contour to an object.
	The Blend tool lets you blend two objects.
	The Distort tool lets you apply a Push or Pull distortion, a Zipper distortion, or a Twister distortion to an object.
	The Envelope tool lets you shape an object by dragging the nodes of the envelope.
	The Extrude tool lets you apply the illusion of depth to objects.
	The Block shadow tool lets you add solid vector shadows to objects and text.

 

Transparency tool

 

The Transparency tool lets you apply transparencies to objects.

 

Eyedropper tools

 

	The Color eyedropper tool lets you select and copy a color from an object on the drawing window or the desktop.
	The Attributes eyedropper tool lets you select and copy object properties, such as line thickness, size and effects, from an object on the drawing window.

 

Fill tools

 

	The Interactive fill tool lets you apply various fills.
	The Smart fill tool lets you create objects from enclosed areas and then apply a fill to those objects.
	The Mesh fill tool lets you apply a mesh grid to an object.

 

 

Variable Outline tool

 

The Variable Outline tool lets you apply an outline of variable widths to an object.

Importing Bitmaps

• You can convert a vector graphic to a bitmap. You can also import and crop bitmaps.
• You can add perspective, shape bitmaps with envelopes, apply color masks, watermarks, and special effects, and change the color and tone of the images

Place bitmaps

• You can import or place a bitmap into a drawing either directly or by linking it to an external file. When you link to an external file, edits to the original file are automatically updated in the imported file. After you place a bitmap, the status bar provides information about its color mode, size, and resolution.

Cropping, Resizing and Rotating Bitmaps

Cropping removes unwanted areas of a bitmap. To crop a bitmap into a rectangular shape, you can use the Crop tool. For more information, see To crop an object or imported photo. To crop a bitmap into an irregular shape, you can use the Shape tool and the Crop bitmap command.

To crop a bitmap

1 In the toolbox, click the Shape tool .

2 Select a bitmap.

3 Drag the corner nodes to reshape the bitmap.

If you want to add a node, double-click the node boundary (dotted line) by using the Shape tool where you want the node to appear.

4 Click Bitmaps  Crop bitmap.

You cannot crop a bitmap comprised of more than one object.

You can also quickly crop a bitmap into a rectangular shape by using the Crop tool .

You can also crop a selected bitmap after you drag the corner nodes by clicking the Pick tool , then clicking the Crop bitmap button  on the property bar.

PowerTRACE

The PowerTRACE dialog box contains controls that help you preview and edit traced results.