H2Ohydrographics 25 Posted September 25, 2013 I am a beginner, using corel draw and graphtec plotter. I am making cups and water bottles for my son's baseball/football team and i am running into a problem, i am sure it is staring me right in the face, ugh! Please see attached photo. My question/problem: I've been using my contour tool to get outlines around the word baseball/football and around aunt, Grammy or whatever term of endearment, and also around baseball/football, each on their own. how do I get an outline after grouping all 3 together? After I group them, my contour/apply is greyed out. I want to put a black background around all 3 to make it pop? Does that make sense? (Kinda like the baseball mom cup but I want a thicker outline) poor football cups need some help, look lame. Thank u so much in advance for your help, hope my question makes sense! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OWJones 1,981 Posted September 25, 2013 Select the items you want to contour around. Go to the Arrange menu and select Shaping > Boundary. Nothing obvious will happen, however it creates a new curve that matches the outline of your selected shapes if they were all welded together. Click on a color in your palette to give it a fill and send it to the back, and then apply your contour to that curve. Voila! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
H2Ohydrographics 25 Posted September 25, 2013 Thank you so very much, can't wait to try it tomorrow! How's the weather in Iowa? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jaybyrd 3,770 Posted September 25, 2013 Select the items you want to contour around. Go to the Arrange menu and select Shaping > Boundary. Nothing obvious will happen, however it creates a new curve that matches the outline of your selected shapes if they were all welded together. Click on a color in your palette to give it a fill and send it to the back, and then apply your contour to that curve. Voila! I wish you had posted that last week before I did it the hard way. I'll have to try it later today. Thanks, OW Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jaybyrd 3,770 Posted September 25, 2013 What version of Corel you have OW? I don't see that option in X3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OWJones 1,981 Posted September 25, 2013 What version of Corel you have OW? I don't see that option in X3 I'm using CorelDraw X6, didn't realize it was a new feature... Thank you so very much, can't wait to try it tomorrow! How's the weather in Iowa? Decent - it's still warm enough that it feels like late summer, but not so warm that it's "hot". Leaves are just starting to turn colors on some trees. It's currently 76° and sunny! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jaybyrd 3,770 Posted September 25, 2013 Y'all just trying to make me upgrade aren't ya? Must be gettin a kickback from Corel. Actually sucks because that is something I have a use for Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Monkey 252 Posted September 25, 2013 I tried it and ended up having to manually move all the nodes of the boundry to make it work on a word. When it made it, it was same size as existing word, then resizing it just made it as id I made the text line larger and no longer was an outline. I couldnt find anywhere it would let me pick an outline size Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
darcshadow 1,626 Posted September 25, 2013 Could you not also group everything, duplicate it, then weld/merge all the items, send it to bottom layer and expand to the desired size? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
H2Ohydrographics 25 Posted September 25, 2013 Okay, I also have corel drawx3 and this wasn't an option under arrange, but kept thinking about what OW Jones said about boundary. So after doing just a little searching, I found it! Select all your objects, Go to effects, then create boundary. Then I selected my boundary and applied a contour to it. Yippee! I am so excited! Thank u ow jones for getting me on the right track, hope this helps someone else. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OWJones 1,981 Posted September 25, 2013 Could you not also group everything, duplicate it, then weld/merge all the items, send it to bottom layer and expand to the desired size? Yes, that's just extra steps to get to the same goal - Arrange > Shaping > Boundary gives you the same thing as Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste, Arrange > Shaping > Weld. It also drops any fill effects, so if you're working with patterned fills, gradients, etc. (for doing print work), it doesn't try to replicate those and further bog down your system. Expanding to the desired size is not the same effect as applying a contour. In this top example, I applied a red contour to black text. In the bottom example, I duplicated the text, set it to red, moved it to back and enlarged it - you can see that it no longer lines up with the original text... 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jaybyrd 3,770 Posted September 25, 2013 I selected all the text (3 lines in my case) and welded them, then I went to interactive contour and just outlined and adjusted to the size I needed. This is the first time I did more that 1 line at a time and it worked fine. By increasing the outline I managed to get all 3 lines into a sort of bubble. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Go-C Graphics 856 Posted September 25, 2013 Any idea how to do this in Inkscape? I was trying to do the exact some thing but couldn't figure it out. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
darcshadow 1,626 Posted September 26, 2013 The only way I've found so far is the method I mentioned earlier about grouping, duplicating, merging/welding/union, and expanding. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites