arcticmonster

need some combine, grouping, break apart curve help

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I did a design with the PEN TOOL. Combined, Grouped and then break apart curve and started doing the fills and what not, then half of the design wasn't attached to the main design anymore and I can't get it back.      by the time I noticed the smaller piece was no longer part of the bigger piece, it was too late to UNDO all as I was painting and cleaning lines.

 

At least I think those are the steps I did.

 

I'm not an advanced user by any means.  

 

Can someone take a look and offer guidance?

 

thanks in advance.

 

I am at work and I only have the CDR file and I can't upload those kinds here.   I can email it.

 

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Here's the image in a nutshell.    the grid part is now it's own and I can't get it to group and break apart so I can fill in the blacks where I want it.

post-25326-0-91978000-1406203970_thumb.j

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I don't know why you would need to group it and then turn right back around and break it apart. I'm an Illustrator guy though so I'll be little help to you other than moral support but one of the Corel guys will be along shortly with some more pertinent info. Group and break apart are typically opposite functions but maybe they mean something different in Corel. 

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I had followed some tutorial online that mentioned to group all the lines together and then break it apart to fill in the spots.  it worked for half of it.

 

Thanks.

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Well, I tried a month of Corel for free and didn't have that much luck. They definitely do things in a different fashion than Illustrator but I was considering buying a copy if for nothing else than to convert files when people send me CDR files. Illustrator just ignores the fact that Corel exists and won't convert either direction. I have one client that uses corel and hires me to vector for him when he's slammed and he has to open my AI files on a different computer so it's a pain. We tried eps and svg files at first and he had trouble with them too so I don't know what the deal is.

 

 I commend you on going for it and getting your hands dirty learning the tricks of the program.  :thumbsup:

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Don't use Corel either but, is the remaining part of the grid that's giving you trouble, 'strokes' that

need to be converted to paths before you are able to combine, break apart, or union?

 

Incidently, "break apart" is not the opposite of "group" in the programs I'm familiar with.

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The remaining part was part of the whole GRID that I selected before grouping and breaking curve apart.  It's PEN lines that I used and curved them.

 

i'm going to get the TRIAL for illustrator as Corel seems to give more issues in complex designed.   i'll try somethings when I get home.

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Yes, those "pen lines" are strokes that have to be expanded (Illustrator) or converted (Inkscape) before certain other operations can take place.

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I don't have Corel either, but if the lines are now curves or paths, there should be a node points at the intersections of the "lines" If you delete the four nodes that make up the "white" square it should then become a black square.

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Thanks.     It was getting late last night and after a few glasses of red with the misses, the brain was starting to fog up.  

 

Thanks all, I now have things to go on

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unless there is an auto save file before you messed It up your done you have to start over. Combine, group, and break apart are different. Nothing wrong with corel draw I do complex art in it all the time. People forget they have limitations at night when tired. You could have the same issue with Illustrator. I have an old CS3 version of Illustrator but never use it. Corel is my main focus. As for coloring in the grid you could have just used the smart fill tool on the left hand side toolbox. Actually to think of it I believe you can get to a longer list of undo unfortunately it slips my mind where it is.

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Regarding CorelDraw.

 

One tool you maybe over looking is the smart fill tool.  It can fill a region creating a new object.  This is sometimes easier than breaking apart a curve and dealing with the resulting objects.

 

Breaking apart objects will in many instances give you sub objects you wish to fill.  Some times multiple break apart's are needed.  As another person noted, break apart is NOT the opposite of group.  Group and ungroup are opposites.  If "break apart" has an opposite, and I am not sure it does, it might be Combine or Weld.

 

Always check what objects are groups of objects and not.  Grouped objects are going to fill as one single object.  In some cases simply ungrouping the objects might be all you need.  Some operations result in a new group of objects that need to be ungrouped, (like breaking apart contours.)

 

You might also consider the Weld tool.  On objects that have become separated the Weld tool will make them back into one.  In addition to weld, the is a tool in the Shape menu called Boundary.  This tool will outline the area making a new shape out of the exterior of the overall pattern.  Another thing to look out for with the shaping tools is that sometimes you get a object that just doesn't seem to obey the shape tool rules.  I have found that "reversing the path" of such an object will often make it behave as expected.

 

Intersect and trim applied to an overlapping solid filled rectangle can often give you areas you are trying to fill. 

 

Like others have said, you need to exercises some awareness as to what are strokes or outlines and what are not.  Being aware that they keep their stroke size, (often set in points,) as you scale is important.  This means if you shrink a design the stroke will become comparatively huge.  There is a setting to force the stroke to scale as the object size changes, but the way I deal with them is convert the strokes or outlines to objects.

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Incidently, "break apart" is not the opposite of "group" in the programs I'm familiar with.

Is "break apart" not the equivalent to illustrators "ungroup"? In Illy it's group or ungroup. Doesn't get simpler. If you have a compound path or clipping path it's make or release. If you have used combine or most of the other pathfinder tools you then have a new compound shape (not in every instance) which would require a release rather than an ungroup but as long as you understand the basic principals the rest makes perfect sense. 

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Wildgoose actually break apart is different then ungroup in corel draw. In corel draw break apart means you actually break apart where two nodes are connected, where as ungroups is to ungroup a bunch of shapes and images.

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Draw's break apart is more similar to Illustrator's Expand and maybe Expand Appearance, though mostly just Expand.  There are differences though.  Corel further has options to break contours, break extrude groups, break artistic text and probably a few others that escape me...(bevel or emboss maybe.)

 

Group and Ungroup are identical in Draw and Illustrator.

 

In draw there is Break curve, Break Apart, and Extract SubPaths.  

 

From some help file: "When you break a path in a curve object, the resulting subpaths remain part of the same object. When you extract a path from an object, you create two separate objects."

 

I feel the way Draw deals with paths, and node editing in general is far easier and more powerful.  You can get to the meat of things in fewer steps in many cases.

 

As for compound paths and release as found in Illustrator, I believe there had to be a history or that is the compound path had to be made from other paths in order for release to work.  Draw's break apart, (I THINK,) somehow looks at the shape and it's interiors and exteriors for break apart to create subpaths.  That is it can work on an imported object with no history, (that is a vector of course.)

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Ok, I re-read what I posted.  I haven't used Illustrator enough lately to be sure what I typed is spot on.  Break Apart might be more like releasing a compound path.

 

I keep telling myself I will practice in Illustrator more, but when I get there I am just three left thumbs and ready to just give up.

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dc I hear ya there I have been using Corel Draw since CD 8 so illustrator Im rusty on and I try to get things going In illustrator but I always end up in corel cause I know it better.

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After reading your posts I am convinced the two programs must come at things from a completely different direction. Same end result but like right side of brain vs left kind of thing or reverse polish calculator vs regular. I am just as lost and frustrated when I use other programs like inkscape and the trial I did with Corel. I guess in the end it boils down to what works for you. From reading here, there are some who manage to use a lot of different programs proficiently. I can rough in with Inkscape when I need to but feel clunky and there are certain operations that are backwards feeling or hidden from me. Even using AI CS2 on my other computer I miss a lot of the newer features that my CS5 version has so much that I end up emailing it to myself and finishing it on the other one. 

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Some more thoughts:

 

Big comparison here:  http://product.corel.com/help/CorelDRAW/540229932/Main/en/Documentation/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm#href=CorelDRAW-Comparing-tools.html&single=true

 

I find I have to switch between the selection tools several times in Illustrator were in Draw the one Pick tool combines this functionality.

 

I am not aware of an equivalent  "crop" tool in Illustrator.  Maybe one can use clipping and opacity masks.  The crop tool can crop curves like it was a bitmap.  The eraser tool is also handy in this vein.  You could probably do this with shape tools or pathfinder tools.

 

Illustrator has threaded text, to flow from one frame to another.  In Draw you link paragraph text frames.  What Illustrator lacks is going to the next page.  It doesn't support multiple pages.  Draw though is going to be bogged down if you try to flow text across hundred's of pages say for a book, but is fine for a newsletter or such.

 

Draw and Illustrator has Color Management.  I don't deal with this greatly and can't state the caveats well.  Inkscape doesn't have Color Management.

 

Draw supports up to 45.72 × 45.72 m artboard, and multiple pages.  Illustrator supports a 5.7785 × 5.7785 m artboard and multiple artboards, (not exactly the same as pages.)  Crazy side note:  Inkscape supports a 304.8 × 304.8 km artboard, (yes I said KM as in "Dude what should we set the max to. Dude a million feet sounds awesome.",) A larger artboard is usefull when dealing with very large output, (like Billboard,) but with scaling any size shortcomings are not hard to overcome. 

 

Draw has a 45000% (estimated) max zoom factor.  Illustrator has a 6400% max zoom factor.  Inkscape has a 25600% max zoom factor.

 

With the pick tool active, you can hold ALT down to dig.  Digging lets you select objects behind other objects, sometimes even in grouped objects.  I don't know how to "dig" in Illustrator.

 

My experience is that Illustrator handles SVG import better.  Draw has a annoying habit of crashing when you import a svg file and try to ungroup it.  I try to use inkscape in those cases and pdf or eps export first.  Conversely, Draw seems to export SVG better.

 

Snapping seems better in Draw.  At least I seem to fight with it in Illustrator.  I love Draw's dynamic alignment.  Draw has snap to guidelines, at some point Illustrator did not, but later versions might.  There are alignment shortcuts in Draw I am married to.  A divorce would be ugly.  C E T B and P are great shortcuts that take several more steps in Illustrator.  Note the dev release of Inkscape has similar shortcuts.

 

Rounding rectangles is a simple short step in Draw.  Fillet, Scallop & Chamfer are great tools.

 

Node editing, (anchor points,) in Draw is just better, related to how the pick tool is all in one vs Illustrator needed different tools.  I find Inkscape to be better than Illy at node/anchor point editing also.  It might even be better than draw but I am not sure as I am not as practiced with it.  Inkscpae as far as raw creation is certainly a heavy weight contender.  

 

Text kerning is more interactive in Draw, though Mac OS probably honors the original font design better, but that is an OS rendering thing.

 

Here us a very old comparison:  http://www.sketchpad.net/drawing10.htm

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That is some interesting info dcbevins.

 

Crazy side note:  Inkscape supports a 304.8 × 304.8 km artboard, (yes I said KM as in "Dude what should we set the max to. Dude a million feet sounds awesome.",) 

The above quote is hilarious! And also good to know.

 

I think the probably the biggest seller that Adobe has going for it is the "Main Stream" near monopoly it has had for so long. I think it is getting some stiffer competition in later years but even now it holds a HUGE share of the market and consequently a lot of acceptance and support along with the fame and fortune. 

 

I don't really have an issue with the multiple selectors, the shortcut keys are so simple it's not even an effort to switch back and forth and most of the time they are used at different times during a build so I don't even notice the switch to tell the truth. You can "Dig" as you say, it's command click. (Cntrl click on pc)  I have my workspace set to only select the edge or very center so I almost never need to use it unless something is actually double stacked. 

 

I give both the other programs mentioned props for extreme zoom. Wish Illy did a little more, I have even exported it to Inkscape once to zoom way in beyond what I could get with Illustrator but it's rare.  Also give props to both for ease of line and node manipulation. I haven't tried out the CC version of Illy yet, I hear it is a lot more user friendly that way than my CS5 and older variants. Inkscape and the trial I had of Corel both seemed easier to just grab a line and move it to where I wanted it without having to grab a node and the nodes were easier to grab when it was time to do that too. 

 

One thing I really DON"T like about Illy is whatever algorithm they have to try and adjust to screen resolution or something. When you are really small it will totally piss you off by moving and realigning lines on small objects and text. I have had to save some work much bigger and then re-size at cut time to avoid this. I don't think there is a way around it within the program other than upsizing which coincidentally would also cure the extreme zoom situations. 

 

ALL of the above aside, I think my single biggest beef with each of them is I absolutely HATE having a bounding box.  I find a use for one about once a month, the rest of the time I have mine gone and as noted earlier I click the edges of what I am working and only that object (or several as the case may be) highlights and there is no silly bounding box whooplaaa going on. Once I got set that way I have hated the boxes every since. It's evidently a complicated thing to be rid of because as far as I have been able to see no one else seems to have the ability to turn it on and off. Once in a blue moon I want to free stretch or rotate something and I'll turn it on but only very rarely, the rest of the time it's just in the way.

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Draws has a "Hide bounding box for curve tools" option.  This is only for some of the drawing tools however, like the bezier tool, and not for all objects.

 

For text frames there is a "show text frames" option.

 

There is a general "treat as filled" option for the Pick tool in Draw. It is not removal of the bounding box, but rather helps sometimes when you have objects that are just outlines and it is difficult to select by clicking.  It is in the options and also a button/icon.

 

But overall, no, Draw can't disable the bounding box.  I think I was aware Illustrator could do this but never used it.  I will have to remember that when I am in Illustrator again.

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Just thought of something, Inkscape has options under preferences-Selector to change some of the Bounding Box behavior.

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