You’ve probably already realized it: DRAW can’t do anything to an object on the page until you first select it. That’s how you call the object to DRAW’s attention. When you have a few simple objects on a page, selecting the objects is easy, but as your drawing board becomes more crowded, selecting will become more challenging. Chapter 32 offers a few strategies for selecting objects in crowded places.

Importing Objects

When it comes to incorporating files from other programs, DRAW will digest almost anything you throw at it. DRAW can accept text files from word processors, tables of numbers from spreadsheets, image files from paint programs, vector art from itself, completed drawings from competing programs, and print files produced by practically any other application. The key requirement is that you either tell DRAW what type of file it is, or give DRAW the opportunity to figure it out for itself. But if you try to import a .pcx file while telling DRAW to expect a Word for Windows file, you’re asking for trouble. Mind-reading is promised in the millenium edition—then you probably won’t even need to select objects before working on them.

The gateway to all importing is the File Ø Import dialog shown in Figure 3.2. Like most programs, DRAW expects certain formats to have particular filename extensions, and it behooves you to follow standard naming conventions when you create your files.

FIGURE 3.2  DRAW’s Import dialog offers a preview window to assist in your importing decisions.

Here are the steps for importing a file:

1.  Choose Import from the File menu.

2.  In the Import dialog, at the Files of Type box, choose All File Formats.

3.  Using the Look In drop-down list, navigate your way to the directory that contains the file you want to use.

4.  Choose one of the files in the File window.

5.  OK the box.

Most of the time, DRAW does a pretty good job of figuring out the format of a file, meaning that you could keep the Files of Type field set to All File Formats. If DRAW tells you that a certain file you have tried to import is corrupted, don’t believe it right away. Try to import it again, but this time set the file type explicitly (for instance, set it to TIFF bitmap for a .tif file).

Pasting Objects

DRAW’s support for the Clipboard has always been robust, and version 9 continues the tradition. Just about anything that you place on the Clipboard can be brought into DRAW one way or the other (or both). One of the most helpful ways to see this in action is to copy a few paragraphs of text to the Clipboard and watch the ways that DRAW can accept them. Try the following little exercise:

1.  Open your word processor or WordPad.

2.  Create some text and format it with a few font changes.

3.  Select the text and choose Edit Ø Copy to place the text on the Windows Clipboard.

4.  Switch back to DRAW (or open it if it’s not already running).

5.  Choose Edit Ø Paste. The text will appear on the page, much like Figure 3.3, depicting the way that these five steps appeared in our word processor.

FIGURE 3.3  This text arrives across the Clipboard looking just like it did in our word processor.

Dragging and Dropping Objects

Here is another way to import outside data into DRAW:

1.  Open the Windows Explorer.

2.  Search for a graphic file with an extension of .tif, .pcx, or .bmp. If you can’t find any, navigate into the Windows directory where you will find various .bmp files used as Windows wallpaper.

3.  Open or switch to DRAW and position its window so that you can see both DRAW and Explorer.

4.  Now drag the file from Explorer into DRAW and drop it there.

Behind the scenes, the maneuver in this exercise is essentially the same as using the Copy-and-then-Paste maneuver, except that you don’t get the menu of Paste Special choices. The default choice is automatically used. You can do something similar even if DRAW is not running: find the graphic you want in Explorer, press Button 2, and choose Copy. Then start DRAW, open a new drawing, and choose Edit Ø Paste.