Simulating a 'puzzle' effect in CorelDRAW® X6

by Silvio Gomes – CorelDRAW Master

In this tutorial, I'll use two examples to demonstrate how you can simulate 'puzzle' effects with
CorelDRAW®. The individual pieces of the puzzle can have a regular shape or any other shape you wish.

Using a regular shape

For the first example, the 'puzzle' pieces will be regular, rectangular shapes.

In CorelDRAW, open or import the image to be fragmented. Then, on the property bar, use the Object size
boxes to adjust the final size of image.

In the toolbox, click the flyout arrow on the Polygon tool and choose Graph Paper from the flyout menu
(or press D).
On the property bar, use the Rows and columns boxes to specify how to fragment the image.

In this example, I used 9 total pieces, or 3 rows × 3 columns.

Note: Be careful not to overdo it when determining the number of 'puzzle' pieces. With bitmap images, the
final size of your file may increase dramatically. This simulation does not 'break' the image into pieces. It
creates copies of the original image, parts of which will be 'hidden' by the PowerClip® function. So, in this
example, the photo was duplicated 9 times. If you are using a vector image, however, the difference to the
final file size will be minimal.

With the Graph Paper tool selected, drag to create a grid. Try to make the grid the exact size of the photo,
or even a bit smaller, so that the image 'bleeds' out of the grid's boundaries.

Next, drag the photo out of the grid, right-click the photo and choose PowerClip Inside.
Note that the cursor has changed to a large black arrow. Click on the edge of the grid to place the photo
inside the grid.

Click on the image and then click the Edit PowerClip button.
Now click the photo and drag to place it into the grid. Note that parts of the image that are outside of grid
will not appear on any 'puzzle' pieces.

When finished, click the Stop Editing Contents button.

Next, select all objects (Ctrl+A) and then click Ungroup All to separate the 9 pieces of the 'puzzle'.
Click on each image fragment and drag and separate them as you wish.

If you want to highlight a certain piece, double-click the chosen fragment and rotate it by using one of little
rotation handles to determine the desired angle.
Optionally, you can also apply drop shadowing to a fragment to give it a special emphasis. First, select the
desired fragment. Then, in the toolbox, click the flyout arrow on the Blend tool and choose Drop Shadow
from the flyout menu.

Now click the fragment and drag to apply the drop shadow effect. On the property bar, adjust the intensity of
Opacity and Feathering. To order the fragment above all other fragments, select it and press
Shift+PageUp.

Using an irregular shape

For the second example, we'll use an irregular shape to simulate the 'puzzle' effect. The steps are very
similar to those from the first example, changing only how to build the grid of the 'puzzle'.

In the toolbox, click the Freehand tool (or the Smart Drawing tool) and draw a heart shape. Then, use the
Graph Paper tool to apply a 2 × 2 grid just as you did for the previous example's 3 × 3 grid.
In the toolbox, click the Smart Fill tool.

Click inside a piece of the fragmented heart and then click a color swatch on the Color palette. For this
example, I filled each piece of the heart with different colors.
With the Pick tool selected, hold down Shift and then click each colored piece of the heart. Then press
Ctrl+G to group them. Click the grid and press Delete.
Import a photo.
Right-click the photo and choose PowerClip Inside. Click on the heart to place the photo inside the shape.
Hover over the photo and click the Edit PowerClip button. Drag to arrange the photo inside the shape and
then click the Stop Editing Contents button. Press Ctrl+A to select all objects and then click Ungroup All.
Then click each fragment and drag, rearrange, rotate, apply effects as you wish.

And finally, here's the completed heart-shaped 'puzzle'.

Test your tattoo with CorelDRAW® before making it real on your
body
by Silvio Gomes

This tutorial shows how you can have a (simulated) preview of your tattoo and make corrections or changes
before making it real.

Important: Take a high resolution picture of the part of your body where you want to apply the tattoo.

In this example only two vector images (a butterfly and floral design), and text were used.

Step 01

Import your own photo and the vector images to a new Document (File > Import).
Step 02

Rotate the floral design 90º (Window > Dockers > Transformations > Rotate) – or use the shortcut
(Alt+F8).

Step 03

Move the floral design to its final position and resize it (click and drag the object handles to resize).
Step 04

Select the floral design and choose the Envelope tool in order to shape it to fit the contours of the body in
the photo (Toolbox > Envelope tool).
Step 05

Using the handles of the Envelope tool, distort the image, following the curves of the body.
Step 06

Select the Text tool (Toolbox > Text), choose a font from the drop-down Font List on the Property bar
and enter your text. Increase or decrease font size using the Font Size drop-down list on the Property bar
and place your text in its final location.

Use same procedure as 'Step 05' to distort the text (Toolbox > Envelope tool).
Step 07

Click and drag the butterfly to its final position. Resize and/or rotate it (Alt+F8) if you wish.
Option: To apply a different color to the object, select it and click on a different color in the Color Palette.

Step 08

Select all the objects (Floral design + Text + Butterfly) and group them (Ctrl+G).

Click on the Transparency tool (Toolbox > Transparency tool), and choosing a Uniform transparency
from the drop-down list in the Property bar, adjust the settings:

Step 09

And here we have our final look.

Design your desk
by Joseph Diaz

Like clockwork, after the holiday season but before spring, we typically get a little break from the hectic
workflow that we normally experience here at our sign shop. We take that opportunity to focus on the
business and clean up around the office and shop. This year it was decided that I needed a new desk. Rather
than going to the furniture store or the office supply store to pick out a desk, we felt like making something a
bit more custom would be the way to go. Like most projects we work on here, we always seem to turn to
Corel Software in order to design what we intend to build.

Furniture is quite different than the normal sign work we create, but it's similar in a lot of ways too, and we
have the equipment and hardware to make it, one of the tools we used was Corel DESIGNER®. I've been a
long time user of CorelDRAW®, but I'm fairly new to Corel DESIGNER. One of the things that appealed to
me about DESIGNER was that its workspace and tools were so similar to CorelDRAW. There was barely
any learning curve at all.

I started the project off by taking measurements of the room that I was going to build my desk for. Like an
architect, I drew out the room in Corel DESIGNER from the top-down perspective. This is done by simply
using your 'Rectangle Tool'. What I do is simply create any old rectangle shape. Then, with the rectangle
still selected I type in the dimensions of that shape or object in the horizontal and vertical 'Object Size'
fields of the Properties Bar.

Next I measured my existing furniture setup. Since I came back to work for the family business after
college, I had been using an old drafting table as a desk. It worked well for all these years but it wasn't the
best use of space, and I was never able to use it as a drafting table with my computer, monitor and other
equipment and supplies sitting on top of it.

For this project I even went as far as to draw up things like my keyboard, monitors, desktop, tablet and etc. I
did this to get a better idea of how much space I was wasting and what I would need for the new desk. I was
only using about half of the old drafting table. The other back half of the desk was unusable and that space
was being wasted. To create the furniture and equipment, I used the same process that I used to create the
walls in my floor plan. Simply use the 'Rectangle Tool', and also the 'Ellipse Tool'. More complicated
shapes can be created by welding different shapes together using the 'Weld' command. The button for
'Weld' will be available in the 'Properties Bar' when you have the two shapes you want to merge selected at
the same time. You can then use your 'Color Palette' to apply colors to objects and furniture in you floor
plan.

It's worth mentioning at this point, that if you want to save time drawing individual furnishing and
equipment by hand, Corel DESIGNER also includes sets of Symbol libraries that let you quickly drag-and-
drop symbols into your designs. To access the Symbol libraries, go to: Window > Symbol Manager. The
Symbol manager docker always displays libraries and collections that are in your local Symbols folder.
You can add collections and libraries to your Symbols folder from elsewhere on the network and the
Symbol libraries include Architectural, Electrical, General, Mechanical and Tools and Hands libraries.

And if you are drawing objects that you need to use in designs on a regular basis, why not save those objects
as symbols or as a custom symbol library? Just right-click on the object and choose: Symbol > New
Symbol. To save multiple objects on a page as a Corel Symbol Library (*.CSL), go to the Symbol Manager
docker with your current file selected, and click on "Export Library".

So the next step was to show how the room would look with the furniture rearrange so that I had a good idea
of what type of space I had for this new "command center".

Now it was time to lay out the basic shape of the new desk. I used the quick little drawings of my equipment
to help with this process, but I still kept in mind that I would on day upgrade it all so I needed to compensate
for that. I started by drawing the desk from above. Two rectangles the perfect size for my work area were
created then welded together using the "Weld" command.
I then drew the top shelves that would hold my paperwork, and the upper most shelve that would hold my
two monitors. I planned on running a bunch of cords to connect things like my monitors, keyboard, mouse,
phone and speakers to a power strip and also to my computer. So I drew up a hole in those shelves big
enough for all those cords to run through.

The next step was to take the drawings of the equipment, like the computer, monitors, keyboards and etc, I
used earlier on in this process, to test if my new desk's dimensions were going work.
As you can see, by making better use of space I was able to keep the old drafting table and still have plenty
of room for walking traffic in and out of my office space. Although now, I can finally use the old drafting
table as a drafting table not just a desk.

Now that I had the top-down view pretty much figured out it was then time to figure out my vertical
dimensions and draw the desk from the front view. Again, having measurements of the equipment and
supplies I plan on using on this desk was helpful, but at this point in the process you want to have an idea of
the dimension of lumber you plan on using as well. The majority of the desk was built from various lengths
of 3 1/2" X 3/4" oak.

For those working in a metric environment you can of course set the application and document settings to
metric units. Using a DIN/ISO page size or template will already include metric settings as default so you
shouldn't have to do anything else. To give you a better idea of the sizes I'm using: ¾'' translates to 19 or 18
mm thick boards.

Other things I considered was the optimal height of the main part of the desk top. I measured other desks in
our shop as a reference. The other thing I did was measure how high the monitors should be so that I wasn't
looking down at them or looking up at them. I wanted them to be parallel with my head when I sat down to
work. So the top shelves were designed accordingly. It actually worked out well because I wanted a place to
store my software cases, including the various Corel products I use. It just so happens those cases were the
perfect height to fit under the shelf holding my Monitors.
Once those two angles were designed it was pretty easy to draw up the 3rd dimension.

It was then time to combine my 3 viewpoints into a one isometric image. This is where Corel DESIGNER
really flexes its muscles. We will start with the top view first. Break your Desk up into the different shelves
that make it up.
Duplicate those shapes and place them off to the side. You won't need to apply any more effects to those,
they will come in handy when you want to order and cut your lumber. Next go to Window > Projected
Axis. From the top dropdown menu select 'Isometric (30, 90, 30)', Now, using those three viewpoints, the
top, the front and the side, I would use the 'Project' functions which can be found under Window >
Transformations > Project.

Select your shapes, and in the Transformation/Project Docker make sure the 'Project' option is selected
from the drop down. Now check next to the 'Top' option and press 'Apply'.
You will then want to repeat those same steps two more times, except for the front angle select 'Front'
instead of 'Top' and on the sides you would select 'Right' before you hit Apply.
Now make sure your 'Gravity Snapping' (or Alt+Z), feature is toggled on. 'Gravity Snapping' is similar to
'Snap to Objects' in CorelDRAW. From here it's just a matter snapping your desk parts together. If you grab
a corner point of a shape you can connect it (with a snap), to a different point on a different shape. You will
find during this process that you may need to create more shapes that might not have been visible from your
top, front or right points of view, but now that you are working in isometric mode you might see a part that
needs to be drawn up. Keep note of those extra parts because you still need the wood or material to make
that part of your design.
So you remember when I said duplicate those flat shapes and set them aside? Sure you do. Now is when you
will need them. In my case, I made a quick phone call to the local hardware store to see what standard sizes
of lumber they had available. With that information in hand, I drew out the dimensions of those standard
sizes. A 4' x 8' piece of oak for my desk top and shelves, a 10' lengths of 10" x 3/4" oak, and several 12'
lengths of 3 ½" x 3/4" oak.

I then took those shapes that make up the various parts of the desk before I applied the isometric 'Project'
effect, and placed them accordingly over top of the rectangles that represent the standard size of lumber that
was available to us. Now I knew exactly how much lumber I needed to order for this project. I also included
the dimensions on those layouts which would come in handy when we cut our lumber down during the
building process.

I then applied color to those shapes and used color to match the 2D flat lumber sketch to the 3D-like
isometric sketch. The goal is to print these out as guides to help during the building process.
Now is all this necessary for one desk? Probably not. However it was a great way to familiarize ourselves
with Corel DESIGNER and to practice for the event were we did need to design a product that would be
mass-produced or assembled off location by someone else. The process could have been used for any
dimensional product. In our case, it was a desk, a desk that is already being put to good use. But most
importantly, I hope some of you who have taken the time to read this learned a little bit more about Corel
DESIGNER.