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So use them. Go to the Position docker and see how object placement differs
with the different tic-tac-toe positions. See what Non-Proportional does
to the sizing of objects. See how the anchor affects skewing.
You Say Potato, I Say Inches
DRAW maintains a link between the units of measure in all of the
Transformation docker windows and the general settings for the drawing.
For example, if you set the unit of measure to centimeters for your
drawing, all docker windows will speak to you in centimeters.
This used to be a terrible flaw when the unit of measure was hidden
in a dialog. In order to transform an object in a different unit
of measure, you would have to go to a subdialog off of a flyout
menu and change the measuring system for the entire drawing.
Now things are easier, for two reasons:
- To change the unit of measure for your
drawing, you can deselect all objects and use the Drawing Units
box on the property bar.
- You can enter any unit of measure you
want, provided you know its abbreviation:
| Inches
| in
|
| Millimeters
| mm
|
| Picas, points
| pc
|
| Points
| pt
|
| Ciceros, didots
| cc
|
| Didots
| dd
|
| Feet
| ft
|
| Yards
| yd
|
| Miles
| mi
|
| Centimeters
| cm
|
| Meters
| m
|
| Kilometers
| km
|
Knowing these abbreviations, you could, say, move a rectangle 6
points to its right, irrespective of the prevailing unit of measure
for the drawing. You would enter 6pt as a value in the Position
docker. DRAW automatically converts the number into the current
unit of measure so, if your drawing were in inches, the docker would
display .083 inch for 6 points.
You can use this technique not only in the Transformation dockers,
but in the property bar and any place throughout the program that
accepts values in the standard measurements.
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Friendlier
Degrees
In the eyes of many, DRAW 9 is finally starting to get it right in the
rotation department. To best describe what Corels engineers are
now doing right, well first tell you what they have been doing wrong
all these years.
Want to louse up a perfectly level rectangle? we asked in
the last edition of this book. Draw one and then open the Rotate
or the Skew roll-up. Now apply the following degrees of change to it,
one after the other: 17, -3, 38, 11, 16.6, -29, and 61. Okay, now return
the rectangle to 0 degrees, so its level again. We dont know
how to spell the sound of Urrrghnt, Reject! but that is the
first thing that comes to mind.
Why couldnt you do it? Because DRAW did not keep track of the degree
of change with respect to an objects original condition. There was
no option to remember original position, or any such safeguard.
So each time you entered a rotation, DRAW added that change to the previous
one.
This was true of the property bar and all of version 8s roll-ups
(except Position with the Relative Position option unchecked). In all
other cases, the only way to return the object to its original position
was to Undo like crazy, manually reverse the operations by entering the
opposite value for every number entered, or have your calculator close
by and ready to figure out the objects exact percentage or degree
of change at any given point.
Corel knows that this has driven its users nuts, and in version 9 they
fixed the most egregious example: rotation. With DRAW 9, the Rotation
value in the property bar tracks degrees of rotation with respect to the
objects original position. So if you enter 15 degrees of rotation,
the object moves counter-clockwise, and the value in the property bar
stays at 15. If you then change it to 10, the object rotates clockwise
back to 10 degrees.
This one little improvement will be responsible for fewer four-letter
words uttered in CorelDRAWs presence.
Please note that this new behavior is only present for Rotation and only
from the property bar; the dockers all continue to treat degrees of rotation
and skew as cumulative values. Therefore, we continue to recommend the
strategy of storing a copy of the object in the Clipboard before you begin
transforming it. Then you can return the object to its original condition
with Delete followed by Ctrl+V.
The Curse
of the Scaled Outline
When stretching objects that have visible outlines, two things can happen
to the outlines: absolutely nothing or nothing good. What determines this
fate is a control within the Outline Pen dialog, called Scale with Image.
If Scale with Image is off, the objects outline stays set at the
original thickness regardless of how much stretching, sizing, or skewing
you do to the object. If you check Scale with Image, the outline scales
with the image, but only in the directions you stretch. Figure
5.2 illustrates this. The original rectangle at top-left uses the default
setting, with Scale with Image unchecked. The original rectangle at lower-left
is set with Scale with Image checked on. As each rectangle is stretched
in one direction, the results are obvious.
FIGURE
5.2 When Scale with Image is checked, distorting
an object will also distort its outlines.
The Scale with Image option is crucial when an outline needs to be sized
relative to the size of the object, but if you expect to be distorting
the object, it would be better to keep Scale with Image off and size the
outline manually.
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