5 Tips for Better CorelDraw Productivity

 

Want to simplify the design process and speed up your workflow?

Check out these top 10 CorelDRAW tips that will help you increase your productivity. These hidden gems from our CorelDRAW experts may surprise even the most experienced user!

Tip 1: Creating Complex Shapes with the Polygon Tool

The Polygon tool is great for making, well, polygons. Here’s a simple pentagon, and you can hold the Ctrl key to constrain its aspect ratio. Activate the Shape tool and click and drag one of the nodes. If you keep Ctrl pressed again, you can drag out a nice, even star.

And it gets even better when you start with a polygon with more sides. Double-click to add a node along any segment; whatever change you make to this new node happens at all the other points as well.

Making these nodes smooth, adding more nodes, and adjusting control handles, makes for even more possibilities.

And these shapes are quite fun to color with the Smart Fill tool.

Tip 2: Easy Alignment

The Object > Align and Distribute menu lists all the shortcuts for the various alignment commands: L for Align Left, R for Right, etc.

It’s easy to use these on selected objects. Press T to align tops, or B to align bottom. The last object selected stays in place, and the others move accordingly.

Tip 3: Transform Docker:

The Transform docker goes beyond simply moving or rotating objects. With an object selected, you can change its position, such as moving it 1” to the right and 1.5” up, then clicking Apply.

To get three of these objects spaced 3” apart, change X to 3, Y to 0, add 2 copies, and click Apply.

For rotating, try rotating 45 degrees about the center, or make 7 copies about the top point.

Tip 4: CorelDRAW Does the Math for You!

If you don’t feel like grabbing your calculator, let CorelDRAW do the math for you. For the rectangle in this example, here are its dimensions, and the document units are in inches.

Tip 5: Navigator and Nano-Preview

If you’re zoomed in while working on one small part of a document and want to move to another part, you don’t have to zoom out and back in again. Click the Navigator icon at the lower right.