A Better Extrude
Extrude also wins a starting position on the Interactive team, making
Figure 2.2 a possibility. Study the figure and youll note that there
is no Extrude roll-up or docker anywhere to be found. Instead, we chose
the Interactive Extrude tool and performed an immediate click-and-drag.
Figure 2.2 shows the dragging of the mouse up and to the left, with the
corresponding extrusion taking effect. If you create extrusions regularly,
youll love this new interactive control.
See Chapter 15 for details on Extrude.
FIGURE
2.2 With version 8, you can create extrusions
with your mouse and property bar.
Automatic Drop Shadows
While envelopes and extrusions are a bit of a specialty, practically
every DRAW user needs to create drop shadows from time to time, and we
think that this one might be the most valuable of all of the new interactive
features. Figure 2.3 shows how easy it is to create a drop shadow in 8:
you choose the Drop Shadow tool from the Interactive flyout, you click
and drag in the desired direction, and you count to about ten. The property
bar provides complete control over placement, feathering, and opacity,
with immediate results. These drop shadows are created from bitmaps, not
blends or contours, and as a result, they are much more realistic and
flexible. We really like this feature, and picked it as the version 8
Rookie of the Year. It gets an entire chapter to itself, Chapter 18.
FIGURE
2.3 The Interactive Drop Shadow feature is one
of the stars of the version 8 show.
Other players on the Interactive team were introduced in version 8, and
we introduce them throughout the book.
CorelDRAW
8s Interface
The most sweeping changes that debuted in version 8 are about how DRAW
presents itself to us. Some of them are far-reaching in scope and implication;
others have us scratching our heads and wondering about the point of it
all. You be the judge...
Whered All of the Modes Go??
One of the most significant, powerful, and invasive of all the changes
is a move to modeless editing of objects. Once you learn the visual cues,
you can create, size, move, and shape an object without taking a single
trip to the toolbox to switch tools. Do this simple exercise to learn
how it works:
- 1. Switch to the Freehand tool and draw a curveany
curve at all.
- 2. Compare your screen against Figure 2.4.
In particular, note how the cursor continues to notify you that you are
in drawing mode. In previous versions, all you could do at
this point was create more freehand curves. But with modeless editing,
you can also perform other tasks, and your cues are on screen. Note that
you can see the six nodes that make up this curve; pass your cursor atop
one of them, and the node will enlarge. At this point, you can perform
basic node-editing, like altering the path, changing the node type, deleting
the node, or adding another one next to it.
- 3. Now find the × in the middle of the object.
- 4. Drag right on the × to move the object,
or click a second time to get rotation handles.
- 5. Use the handles as per usual to size the object.
All the while if you click and drag anywhere else, you will create a
second curve, because through it all, the Freehand tool is active. If
the Ellipse tool were the active one, then a click-and-drag in open
space would create an ellipse.
While this is a powerful interface addition, it might also get in the
way. Therefore, you should know how to disable it, by going to Options
Ø Workspace Ø
Display and unchecking Enable Node Tracking. The × still appears
in the middle and the nodes are still visible, but they wont grow
when you pass over them.
Better Guideline Control
Another in a procession of subtle improvements, DRAW 8 treats guidelines
as objects. That means you can delete them, copy and paste them, nudge
them, select and move several at once, and rotate them around any center
of rotation. Coupled with another new featurethe ability to lock
any objectguidelines are much more flexible. We were never crazy
about the fact that we had to lock all of our guidelines en masse when
we often wanted to lock only some of them. Now, instead of locking the
entire Guideline layer, we will just select a particular guideline and
request that it be locked.
FIGURE
2.4 With modeless editing, you can move the
object (click and drag the ×), node-edit (click on any node), size
and skew (use the selection handles), or create new curves (click and
drag anywhere else).
Your Own (Work)space
If you think of your workspace as your overall CorelDRAW environment,
then youre on the right track. Position of toolbars...type of color
palette...rulers visible...status bar one line...customized menus...nudge
setting...and the list goes on and on. With version 8, not only can you
save all of those settings (as with previous versions), you can also create
more than one group of settings. Corel calls them workspaces, and
you can create customized workspaces for particular users or projects.
A workspace is one of several version 8 designs that are at the same
time powerful and potentially confusing. You might need to unlearn a few
things before taking advantage of it, and we throw a blanket on the subject
in Chapter 34.
Quick-Align Accelerator Keys
Lets say you want to align two objects so that their left sides
are at the same vertical position. As most of you know, the traditional
way would involve a trip to the Align and Distribute dialog where you
would choose Left and then OK.
When objects are selected, there are plenty of hotkeys available for
specific functions, like Ctrl+A, Ctrl+L, and Alt+F3. But pressing
character keys by themselves in all previous versions didnt do anything;
you could type the entire alphabet and get no response from DRAW. Corel
engineers saw in this a golden opportunity to add more interactivity to
the program. Why open a dialog to align objects when there are these perfectly
good keys doing nothing at all? In one of the more ingenious displays
of minimalist thinking, they added so-called accelerator keys to
the alignment options. With two or more objects selected:
- Press L to left-align them.
- Press R to right-align them.
- Press T to top-align them.
- Press B to bottom-align them.
- Press C to center-align them vertically.
- Press E to center-align them horizontally.
You dont need to press anything else with these keys; its
not Ctrl+L or Alt+R or anything like that. Just press the key
and the objects instantly align. This is definitely one of those Why-didnt-we-think-of-that
features.
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