CorelDraw Basic

Welcome to Corel Draw

Corel Draw is a comprehensive vector based drawing program that make it easy to create a
professional artwork from simply logos to technical illustrations. Corel Draw tools are designed

to meet the demands of the graphic are professional.

Corel Corporation is an internationally recognized developer of award-winning productivity,

graphic and operating system solutions on the window, Linux, UNIX, Macintosh, and Java

platforms. Corel also develops market-leading, web-based solutions including applications, e-

commerce and online services.

 Installing and Uninstalling application

Install any Corel application included in your S/w package

Add component to currently installed application

Refresh files and configuration of currently installed application

Uninstall all or some of the components of Corel applications

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  Starting Corel Draw

Click Start Run.

Type the pathname for the Corel Draw.exe followed by /h,

e.g. X:\draw10\programs\coraldraw /h

 MENU BAR

It’s possible to produce several simple drawing without having to access Draw’s pull down

menus-especially if you make a habit of using hotkeys such as Ctrl + S(Save) and Ctrl +

P(Print). Whether you’re a hotkey kind of person or not, though it’s important for you to

understand how the menus are laid out and what kind of logical groupings the program employs

for its commands.

The File Menu

Finally the(ellipsis) that follows many of the commands is there to tell you that a dialog or

docker is lurking underneath. By contrast commands that perform their entire functions as soon

as you active them-such as Save and Exit. This menu is Draw’s Grand Central Station, where all

files enter and exit. This is the menu form which you open save, import, export, and print files.

Veteran users will notice a few new items: Print Preview is a shortcut to Draw’s new preview

screen within the Print dialog and Publish to PDF might be one of the most significant additions

to DRAW ever.

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 The Edit Menu

This menu is charge of changing, duplicating, copying, deleting, cloning, undoing and repeating

just about anything. As it does in all OLE-compliant programs, the Edit menu acts as the

headquarters for all Clipboard activity coming from and going to other programs.

On this menu, the Paste and Paste Special commands are available, indicating that there is an

object on the Clipboard, placed there by DRAW or another program. Also on the menu are Undo

and Red. You will also be happy with the find and replace command, which allows you to find

and replace both objects and text.

The View Menu

The view menu takes charge of almost all on-screen activities. These controls let you specify

which parts of the DRAW interface you want to make visible or keep hidden as well as how

much detail of your drawing’s components you want displayed. Notice the viewing choices of

simple Wire frame, Wire frame, Draft, Normal and Enhanced and the large number of on-screen

controls to toggle on and off. This is also the home of Draw’s snap control-Snap to Grid,

Guideline and objects.

The Layout Menu

The Layout menu has shrunk considerably in DRAW with the exodus of the snaps. We think it

should have been renamed to the Page menu as the seven commands that make up the menu all

have to do with page controls adding, deleting and configuring pages, including the new Switch

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Page Orientation, which address the ability to have pages with different orientations, all in the

same drawing.

The Arrange Menu

If it needs to be ordered, layered, collected, skewed, stretched, moved or put back together

again, it’s a job for the Arrange menu. Here you can insist that two objects be moved and sized

together with the group, combine or weld command or coupled more exotically with the

intersection and Trim commands.

The drawings you create in DRAW will include many different shapes and objects layered in just

the right way to create the effect you want. The order fly out has the commands for moving

objects to the front and back of the stack and for moving items forward and back one layer. Like

many seasoned DRAW users, you will want to commit to inconveniently a level below the other

functions in the order fly out. You’ll find the key assignment display on the fly out itself.

The Effect Menu

This used to be Draw’s most happening place, housing all of its special effects. But now it’s a

sparse house, with most of the celebrities having moved out and taken up residence on the fly out

as interactive tools. Lens still lives there and so do Power Clip and Add Perspective. The other

commands address transformations and controls for the Natural Media tools.

You’ll probably head there most to access the Clear, Copy, and Clone commands that work on

special effects.

The Bitmaps Menu

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The Bitmaps Menu introduces many of the powerful features found in PHOTO-PAINT, for

use with imported bitmaps. E.g. of the cooler effect.

The Text Menu

The Text Menu is your supermarket for text formatting and editing and awide assortment of

powerful tools can be found here. The Fit Text to path command is perhaps the most widely

used special effect in all of DRAW history.

On the other hand, Thesaurus, which is available on the writing Tools fly out might be the least-

used command. As DRAW continues to increase its support for text-heavy documents, word

processing features might see more action as of now however they lie almost dormant. We will

concede that Type Assist also in the writing Tools fly out introduced to little fanfare in version 5,

has found its niche and provides valuable services for typists looking for a few shortcut or

assurance of professional typography, such as true quotes and embassies.

The Tool Menu

The Tools Menu is the electronics equivalent of the tools shed you may have out back, or the

large peg board hanging in your garage. Before embarking on a big project, make a stop here and

pull down the version tools that you will need along the way. Most of these tools existed in

previous versions but were scattered across various menus.

The Window Menu

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This Window has seen the most change in DRAW10. Once the modest domicile for Draw’s

Multiple Document Interface services, now all sorts of new tenants occupy it. Most notably you

can get a list of all palettes, Dockers and toolbar that DRAW offers.

The Helps Menu

This menu is the conventional gateway to Draw’s Help system. Corel TUTOR offers step-by-

step instructions and can also act like a Wizard, completing a given task on its own as you

observe. If you have used earlier version of DRAW and are upgrading to DRAW 10, check out

Corel TUTOR to get an overview of new features and familiarize yourself with the newest

offerings in the program.

 TOOL BOX

Exploring the Toolbox

The tools that makes up the toolbox are the electronic lifeblood of DRAW. You can create

hundreds of complete drawing using just these tools and no menu commands. Following is a

brief rundown on each tool

The Pick Tool

The Pick Tools acts as home base for DRAW. It is the tool that you use to select objects before

altering them, and it is the active tool every time you start that program. You can select an object

by clicking on it with the Pick tool once you’ve selected an object, you also use the Pick tools to

move and/or resize it. Most advanced DRAW user take the Pick tool so much for granted that

they may not even know its name. They might describe it as "that thing at the top that is always

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highlighted when you aren’t using anything else. You know the one that pretty much does

everything.” That about sums up the Pick Tool.

The Shape Edit Fly Out

The tools in this fly out led by the Shape tool itself preside over parts of an object, rather than the

whole. While you would reach for the Pick tool to move or resize an entire curve or a whole

string of text, the shape tool and its brothers provide access to a part of the curve or one character

in the text string. The parts of a curve are called nodes and by adjusting a node you can change

the essential shape of a curve.

The Zoom Fly Out

The other Zoom commands are available from the View Manager. All told you can use zoom

the following ways in DRAW. The zoom tools is one of the most essential aids to creating and

editing illustrations because it lets you work in the optimum magnification. The toolbox offers

you quick access to the zoom in tool, which you can use to drag a marquee around the area you

want to magnify. The fly out offers a panning tool as well as which we suspect you won’t use too

often, because the panning technique of using Alt and your arrow keys is faster and more

convenient.

Zoom Out enables you to reduce the view of a magnified area.

Zoom Actual Size lets you display your drawing at its actual printing size.

Zoom to Page display the entire page.

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 Zoom to Page Width bring the width of the page into close view.

Hot Key : F2 for triggering Zoom in mode, F3 for Zoom out, Shift+F2 for Zoom to Selected, F4

for Zoom to All Object, and Shift+F4 for Zoom to page

The Curve Fly Out

If the pick tool is the essential editing tool, then the freehand tool is the essential creation tool. It

is the electronic equivalent of the artist sketching pencil. The Freehand tools primary mission is

to support freehand drawing and Bezier drawing, but several other types of drawing tools are

part of this combined tool. Click on the tool and hold for a moment to access the fly out, and then

move your cursor over each one to see its help.

Freehand drawing really is like working with a pencil, to draw you hold the mouse button down

and move around the page. If you remember the old Etch-a-Sketch contraptions, you can get a

good idea of the type of free-from work this tool is capable of.

Hot Key : F5

The Rectangle And Ellipse Tool

The first tools most new users reach for the simple Rectangle and Ellipse tools produce their

respective shape with simple click and drag maneuvers. Once created, these shapes inherit the

default outline and fills that are in effect for that area in effect for the DRAW session. With both

the Rectangle and Ellipse tools, if you hold the Shift key while dragging the object draws from

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the center out. If you hold the Ctrl key while dragging, you can create squares and perfect

circles.

Hotkey : F6 for Rectangle and F7 for Ellipse

The Object Fly Out

It must not have been a very inspiring day at Corel when the developers named this set of tools.

Form this rather drab-sounding Fly Out come the rather exciting Polygon, Spiral and Graph

paper tools. The Polygon tools does more than just create starts, it create dynamic object with

multiple sides, all of which move as you move one of them. The spiral tool makes spirals and the

Graph Paper tool makes grids of boxes, according to your specification. Nested in this tool are

two other tools, one for making spirals and another for making grids.

HotKey : None but like all other parts of the interface, you can assign one to each of the three.

The Text Tools

This tool brings the written word to your drawing. By clicking once one the Text icon and then

once on the page, you can create artistic text, the more versatile of the two text types. This text

can be enhanced with all the special effects DRAW has to offer, such as extrusion, blends and

fitting to a path.

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HotKey : F8

The Fill Fly Out

With this tool, you can make quick changes of Fills and Patterns without having to retreat to a

dialog. It triggers its own property bar, with all of the primary fill patterns and controls present.

The other tool on the Fly Out is the new Mesh tool, capable of creating freeform patterns with

solid colors.

The Interactive Transparency Tool

With this tool you can apply transparency to object with on-screen controls. The most

noteworthy distinction of this features is its ability to apply transparency to any object, be it a

vector object you create in DRAW or a Bitmap image you import from elsewhere. Furthermore

transparency doesn’t have to be flat and even you can create graduated transparency that more

closely mirror life.

HotKey : None

The Interactive Tool Fly Out

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Another uninspired name if we do say so. This should have been called the effect Fly Out

because it is now the primary residence of all Draw’s amazing special effects. Blend gets top

billing thanks to its positions as leadoff hitter, but batting behind it are contour, distortions

envelops, extrusions and drops shadows.

HotKey : None but can be given custom hotkey.

The Eyedropper Fly Out

This brand new pair of tools makes it very easy to determine colors used in an image or an object

and apply them to other objects. The Eyedropper can sniff out a color in any type of object,

including an important bitmap and it honors the type of color model used.

HotKey : Non

The Outline Fly Out

The Outline tool is a one stop for assigning outline color and widths to any selected objects, be

they curves, rectangle, ellipses, or text characters. You can choose from 6% outline thickness

and 7% of black or you can access the Outline Pen dialog or docker to treat yourself to a bevy of

controls. Clicking on the X button removes any outline from a select object.

HotKey : FIZ to reach the Outline Pen dialog and Shift + FIZ for the Outline.

Drawing Window

The portion of the application window on which you can create a drawing.

Drawing Shapes

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CorelDraw lets you draw basic shape, which you can transform using special effects and

reshaping tools.

Drawing Rectangle and Squares

CorelDraw lets you draw rectangles and squares. After you draw a rectangle of square, you can

reshape it by rounding one or more of its corners.

Drawing Ellipses, Circles, Arcs and Wedges

You can draw can ellipse or circle and change the shape into an arc of wedge. You can also

change the direction of arcs and wedges.

Drawing Polygons and Stars

CorelDraw lets you draw polygons and stars and then reshape them. e.g. you can convert

polygons to stars and stars to polygons, change the number of side on a polygon or the number of

points on a star and sharpen the points of a star.

Change made to a single node of a polygon or star can be applied to all other nodes so that all are

symmetrical.

 Fly Outs

The Fill Fly Out

Perhaps the richest of all the tools, the Fill tool can help you perform some simple chores, such

as assigning a pure color to an object to an object, as well as more exotic tasks, such as creating a

fountain or textured fill.

When you assign a fill, it affects only the selected object, like the Outline tool. If no object is

selected the change is made to the default, filling all subsequent objects. And you can access

other dialogs and Dockers that bring the full power of this tool to your fingertips, just as can

with the Outline tool.

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HotKey : Fill to reach the Fountain Fill dialog and Shift + F11 for the Uniform Fill dialog.

 Standard Toolbar

Exploring the Toolbar

There was a time when we though draws standard tool bar was not worth mentioning. We just

couldn’t get that exited about a little button that saves a drawing, since

File, Save or Ctrl + S both do that just fine. Vertical seen space on even a high resolution

display is far too valuable to waste on redundant controls, we thought.

This is also true for the property bar, which is potentially of even greater value, Thanks to its

context-sensitivity. Just remember this once you set up your standard toolbar, it will always look

the same trio matter what you’re doing in the program.

However the property bar is ever-changing, reflecting the set of controls that are most relevant to

the particular task you are performing.

 Working with Docker Window

Introduced in version 10, Dockers perform many of the same function as conventional dialog,

but they are more interactive. For instance they don’t disappear as conventional dialog do after

carrying out a command. And because of their flexibility you can placed Docker right next to the

object you are drawing for quick mouse action or dock it to any of the edges of the DRAW

window. Dockers have been gradually reloading roll-ups the old-style interactive control and as

of DRAW 9, that replacement is complete.

This one enables you to choose the position of objects. Instead of clicking on an OK button to

enact a change you click on the apply button. And instead of disappearing promptly, this docker

can stick around making a series of tweaks a friendlier task.

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You can open many Dockers at once and those that are not active lie in wait behind the one i.e.

to see a list of all Dockers in the program go to window Dockers.

 The Status Bar

The Status Bar displays by default at the bottom of the screen. Initially you see two areas in the

status bar, the coordinates on the left give you the screen position of the mouse pointer and Fill

displays the Fill pattern or color of the selected object. The status Bar also displays information

about the selected objects in this case, that it is a group consisting of 439 smaller objects the

status bar can be one or two lines deep and positioned on the top or bottom of the Corel Draw

window. While you can move or size it by clicking and dragging interactively the easier way is

to right-click on the status bar and then uses the context menu. From that context menu you can

reset the status bar to its original size and position and also customized it to show you items of

information such as memory allocation and the status of Caps Lock and Num Lock.

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Drawing with The Bezier Tool

Creating curves with the freehand drawing is easy if inelegant. It’s not unlike using an Etch-a-

Sketch, with which you move haphazardly from one point to another Creating curves with the

Bezier drawing tool is a truly different experience, both in the way the tool operates and in the

“Result”.

Drawing in Bezier mode is like sculpting with warm hell-O. Every action has a reaction and

you’ll always feel like you’re one jiggle too slow to keep up. You surely will again little

understanding of how the tool works by reading someone else’s prose. The only way to learn is

to experiment with the tool yourself. Nonetheless, our advice follows.

However and this is one of several confusing aspects you can choose when to perform the drag.

You can do either of the following:

You were warned this stuff is impossible unless you put hand to mouse or tablet. So open a new

window and try following two maneuvers:

1. From the Curve fly out choose the Bezier tool

2. Click once anywhere on the page.

3. Move the mouse elsewhere.

4. Click and drag. As you drag you will be creating a smooth curve.

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  Bezier Lines and Curves

Most artists agree when you need to trace or create a precise shape the tool of choice is the

Bezier and that is what we will show you first

1. After you have downloaded seagull.jpg and placed it in a known location on your system,

go to file - > New to being a new graphic and use File >- Import to retrieve the seagull.

Click once to place the seagull on the page at full size.

2. Once the seagull is on your page right-click on it and choose Lock Object. This way you

won’t inadvertently move it. If you’re going to trace it you want it to sit still.

3. Press F4 to move in as close as you can.

4. Active the Bezier tool horn the Curve layout and start at the top-left corner of the bird.

On your own, see if you can identify the places where nodes belong. To place a node simply

click once with your mouse. Look for places where the shape turns a sharp comer and where the

shape change direction. Navigation skills are at premium when you are doing close node work so

remember, so remember these maneuvers:

Press F2 and draw a marquee to zoom in on any location.

Press F3 to quickly zoom back out.

Press F4 to show the entire drawing.

Use Alt + arrow keys to scroll your screen without having to mouse down to the scroll

bar.

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  The Knife Tool

Open the Shape edit fly out, and click the Knife tool

Position the Knife tool over the object’s outline where you want to start cutting

Click the outline to start cutting

Position the Knife tool snaps where you want to stop cutting and click again

You can also Split an object along a freehand line Drag form where you want the cut to start to

where you want it to end. Split an object along a Bezier line hold down SHIFT, click where you

want to start cutting an object and click each time you want to change the direction of the line. if

you want to constrain the line by 15-degree increment, hold down CTRL+SHIFT.

Redraw a path along a freehand line Split the object along a freehand line, but before you click

where you want the cut to end press TAB once or twice to choose the cut you want. Redraw a

path along a Bezier line Split the object along a Bezier line and press TAB until you get path you

want. Split an object into two sub paths click the Leave as one object button on the property bar.

 Using Erase Tool

You can split a bitmapped image or vector object in two and reshape it by redrawing its path.

You can split a closed object along a straight or jagged line. Corel Draw lets you choose between

splitting an objects or leaving it as one object composed of two or more sub paths. You can

specify whether you want to close paths automatically or keep them open.

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Corel Draw lets you erase unwanted portions of bitmapped images and vector objects. Erasing

automatically closes any affected paths and converts the object to curves. If you erase connecting

lines, Corel Draw creates sub paths rather than individual objects.

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