PART II
Life in an Object-Oriented World

Chapter 3
The Miracle of the Click: Maneuvering the Mouse

Featuring

We mentioned it in Chapter 1, and it bears repeating here: the manual skills required to operate DRAW are not hard to acquire. They consist mostly of clicking, double-clicking, and a bit of dragging. Now please don’t infer from this that producing beautiful work in DRAW is easy; manual skills and design expertise are two entirely different things. We can help you only a little with the latter, and anyone who claims otherwise should be held in the same regard as those who peddle Internet-based get-rich-quick schemes. But we can get you up and running nicely with the manual skills, and that’s what this chapter is all about.

Working with Objects

There are six ways to place an object into a DRAW file: you can create it yourself; you can import a piece of clipart; you can paste an object from another program by using the Clipboard; you can drag artwork from another application and drop it into DRAW; you can find an item in DRAW’s online Symbols library; or you can get an object from DRAW’s Scrapbook. Regardless of their origins, all these objects behave the same once they arrive. They are all subject to (drumroll, please) Altman’s Laws of DRAW.

Altman’s Laws of DRAW proclaim the following rights for objects:

•  Thou shalt be selectable by the mouse.

•  Thou shalt be at liberty to move about the page.

•  Thou shalt be free to be resized, reshaped, and rotated.

•  Thou shalt include an outline, which can be colored and thickened.

•  If thou art a closed object, thou shalt accept an internal color, tint, or pattern.

•  Thou shalt be disconnectable.

Only one type of object is exempt from these laws: bitmap images that are brought into DRAW or converted from existing artwork (discussed later in this chapter). Bitmap images cannot be filled, outlined, or taken apart, but they can be sized, shaped, and rotated. All other objects (all vector objects) follow the CorelDRAW fold.

Creating, Moving, and Changing Objects

If you have used Windows applications at all, you already know how to create an object, and as we said earlier in the book, you could probably get behind DRAW’s steering wheel and drive your way to an ellipse or a rectangle on your first try. The simple click-and-drag maneuver is all that’s required. Creating lines and Bézier curves is a bit more involved than creating ellipses and rectangles, and these techniques will get a starring role in subsequent chapters.

To get started with objects in DRAW, the only other things you need to know are how the click and double-click work: one click selects objects on the page or colors from the on-screen palette, and a double-click (two quick clicks) selects files from various dialogs (Open, Import, Save, Export, and so forth). You’ll always know when an object in a drawing is selected because it exhibits all sorts of growths around its perimeter:

•  The black squares outside of the object are its handles, and you use them to size the object.

•  The smaller hollow squares on the edge of the object are its nodes, and you use them to change the shape of the object.

The click-and-drag technique is the handiest maneuver of all. It is responsible for accomplishing many tasks in DRAW:

•  To move a selected object that is filled with a color (even white), click anywhere inside the object and drag it to its new home.

•  To move a selected object that has no fill, click carefully on the object’s outline and then drag it. If the object is obscured by another object, find the little × in the middle of the object, click it, and drag.

•  To resize an object in height, width, or both, click one of its handles, hold the mouse button down, and drag the handle to another position.

•  To rotate or skew an object, select it, click it a second time, and then click and drag one of the skew handles, as shown in Figure 3.1.

	TIP If you find it difficult to click and drag on unfilled objects, then right-click the Pick tool, select Properties, and check Treat All Objects As Filled.

FIGURE 3.1  The click-and-drag technique is responsible for many feats within DRAW, including the unfortunate rotation of this family’s soon-to-be-lost luggage.

Click-and-drag is the most flexible way to move objects, but not the most precise. If you need more control over motion, there are a few other places to look. First, visit the Position option of the Transformation docker, reached through Arrange Ø Transformation. This tool enables you to enter coordinates for an object’s new position, providing far greater precision than you could accomplish with the mouse, or even a drawing tablet. Another strategy is to use the Ctrl key while dragging an object. When you hold Ctrl as you drag, an object is constrained to move either up and down or side to side, but not both at the same time.

The Ctrl key might become your best friend in DRAW because it provides precision in many different situations. For instance:

•  Hold Ctrl while rotating an object, and rotation is constrained to 15-degree increments (15 degrees is the default setting; you can change the value at Tools Ø Options Ø Edit Ø Constrain Angle).

•  Hold Ctrl while sizing an object, and sizing is constrained to whole increments. You can double the size of the object, or triple it, and so on, but nothing in between.

•  Hold Ctrl while using the Interactive Fountain Fill tool, and you constrain the fill angles to 15-degree increments (the default setting).

•  Select an object, hold down Ctrl, click on a handle, and drag it back across the object to mirror it across the vertical or horizontal axis. To copy the object, click Button 2 once before releasing Button 1.

	TIP In DRAW, think of Ctrl as an abbreviation for CONstrain.