Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
The Basics
Brellnet Computer College
CORELDRAW (THE BASICS)
Introduction
CorelDraw is a versatile computer graphics program that can be used to produce
most types of documents such as:
Logos
Letters
Letterheads
Notes
Manuals
Notices
Labels
Business cards
Greeting cards
Web pages
PDF documents
and so on Figure 1a
Examples of CorelDRAW files
Figure 1a
Samples of CorelDRAW files
Figure 1b
CorelDRAW welcome screen
When you launch CorelDraw, the application window opens containing a drawing
window. The rectangle in the center of the drawing window is the drawing page
where you create your drawing. The CorelDraw application window appears below.
A description of its parts follows.
Figure 2b
Exercise #1
Figure 2a
CorelDRAW application window
5. type ‘Beginners’
OR
16. Click any of the ‘color wells’ (color wells are boxes on the color palette)
Basic Concepts
COMMONLY USED TOOLS
Click on the Rectangle tool whenever you want to draw a box. Double-click the
Rectangle tool to create a ‘page frame’ (a page frame is a box that covers the
entire drawing page).
1.) Click the Rectangle tool hold down left mouse button
3.) Drag your mouse pointer diagonally while holding release mouse button
Figure 5b
A page frame
HANDLES
Whenever an object or text is selected, handles appear around the object. You
can switch back and forth between the selection handles and the rotate handles
by clicking on an object or text repeatedly.
The eight (8) square shaped handles are the selection handle. The selection
handles may be used to adjust the size of an object. We would consider the rotate
handles later.
Center handles
Corner handles
Whenever you use the mouse pointer to any of the four (4) handles at the corners
an arrow with two heads that has a diagonal orientation appears. You can use any
of these four (4) corner nodes to increase or reduce both the width and height of
the object at the same time.
However, when you the mouse pointer to any of the four (4) center handles an
arrow with two heads that has a vertical or horizontal orientation appears. You
can use any of these four (4) center handles to increase or reduce either the width
or height of the object.
Using CorelDraw, you may want to design a business card that measures 3.5 inches
by 2.0 inches such as the sample business card shown bellow. Hence it is important
to know how to set specific width and height for a box.
NOTES:
The resultant box will measure 3.5 inches (width) by 2 inches. This can be
verified by looking at the left side of the Status bar at the bottom of the
window
2.0 inches
Figure 9a
A rectangle measuring 3.5 inches by 2 inches
3.5 inches
PRACTICE SESSION 6:
Outline color
b.) If you want to draw a perfect square using the Rectangle tool
c.) If you want to draw a straight line using the Freehand tool
Other instances when you can use CTRL as CorelDraw’s constrain key would be
considered later.
SELECTING OBJECTS
The Pick tool can be used to select one or more objects. Selecting several
objects at the same time enables you to work or such objects as a group instead of
working on them individually. Let us consider two (2) methods of selecting several
objects.
MARQUEE SELECT
Marquee select is to highlight objects by dragging the Pick tool diagonally while
holding down the left mouse button and enclosing objects in a marquee box with
dotted lines as illustrated below:
Whenever several objects are
selected the status bar usually
indicates the number of objects
that are selected (1).
INTRODUCTION TO TEXT
The Text tool allows you to add text (words) to your drawing. Whenever you are
working with text, text formatting buttons and selectors appear on the property
bar:
These can be used to change the appearance, size and alignment of text. To add
text to you drawing, simply take the following steps:
can also highlight some of the words in block of text using the Text tool – this
would be demonstrated in our next practice session (9).
Whenever a section of text block is selected (such as the second line of our
practice session #9) whatever format operations that are performed affects
the selected section only.
Moving an object from outside the Drawing page into the Drawing page
because whatever is outside the Drawing page will not be printed whenever
you decide to produce a hard copy of your drawing. (1)
(1)
Sample text
Sample text
(2) U&I
U&I
Placing text that was typed outside a rectangle inside as in the case of
designing a business card. (2)
However, how far will a selected object move when you press
the arrow key? - This depends on the nudge offset setting. To illustrate, if the
nudge offset is set to 2 inches, then selected objects will move downward by 2
inches whenever you press the down arrow key on you
keyboard. It is recommended that you set your nudge offset
to a small value such as 0.1 inches so that selected objects do
not move too far whenever you press the arrow keys.
Sample text
2 inches
Sample text
3.) Select inches from the Drawing Units selector of the Property bar
4.) Type 0.1 into the Nude Offset box
5.) Press the Enter key on the keyboard
Figure 19d
Figure 19c
A horizontal straight line
Drawing a horizontal straight line
Note: Use the right mouse button to click on any of the color boxes on the color palette
whenever you apply color on lines and curves. Please ensure that the curve or line is
selected with the Pick tool before you do this.
Figure 20a
Drawing a curve Figure 20b
A curve drawn with the freehand tool
TOOLS FLYOUT
Some tool buttons on the toolbox buttons have arrows at their bottom right
corners.
Examples of Tools with flyouts: note the arrows at their bottom right corners Examples of Tools without flyouts
If you click this arrow a ‘fly out’ appears that displays a number of related
tools. Whenever the ‘fly out’ appears, you may select any of these related tools
by clicking on it. For example, the Outline tool ‘fly out’ can be used to set
how thick you want you rectangle, circle, line or curve to be.
Some of these keys can be used as shortcut keys for zoom operations:
F2 F2 can be used to activate the zoom tool. So whenever you need to use
the zoom tool, simply press function F2 instead of clicking the zoom tool.
To delete an object
1.) Click the Save button (1) on the Standard bar (If
Figure 24a
this is the first time that you are saving the file, the Save button on the Standard bar
Save Drawing dialog box will appear requesting for a
file name See Figure 24b)
Figure 24b
Save Drawing Dialog box
by clicking on the save button on the Standard bar from time to time. This
will ensure the copy of your work that is in the permanent storage (hard disk) is as
current as the one that you looking at on your screen.
Click Save button from time to CorelDRAW automatically Design your work
time in other to transfer data transfers data into the or make changes to
into non-volatile permanent volatile temporary existing file
memory (hard disk) memory
Figure 24b
Open Drawing dialog box
Note: If there are several CorelDraw files on your computer and you are not sure
which of the files contain the work that you are looking for, you can use the
PREVIEW option (4) of the Open dialog box. This option gives you a thumbnail view
(preview) of files without opening them. In order to use this option, ensure that
Preview checkbox is marked (or ticked).
FONTS
A font is a computer lettering style. Some fonts are simple or Commonly used fonts
plain, some are formal-looking, while some are cursive / • Arial
artistic. • Arial Black
•
The type of font that you apply on your text should be
dependent factors such as:
Desire for Clarity
Type of Job
Your taste / creativity
The Property bar can be used to apply or change text font whenever text is
selected. The font selector shows a preview of the font you select.
APPLYING FONTS
Fonts may be applied to an entire block of text or to some of the words or letters
within a block of text.