Thanks Fluid.  I really appreciate all of the help offered here.  I agree with you, I would much rather learn how to accomplish a task in Corel, than have someone simply hand it to me.  I could actually purchase the Rope Boarder already made and ready to use - but what fun would that be.  When you post the instructions, please try to also post the Command for the task - for example:  Contour = Ctrl+F9.  Hendrick's finished rope would actually carve very nicely on my machine.  The CarveWright is similiar to Laser machines - in that they both read scales of grey, rather than colors - so I will need to creat all of my projects in various scales of grey.  The darker the shade the deeper the machine carves, so I actually need the highest point of the carving to be in the lightest shade of grey (if that makes sense).

When I tell you I'm a beginner, I'm not kidding.  I've been using Corel for about 2 weeks (just after I bought the CorelDrawX3 software). 

Bill, 

As one who writes tutorials, we have to assume a certain level of knowledge. The alternative is that every tutorial is incredibly complex.

Since you are new to the software, I would highly suggest you look into a resource that will get you up to speed with CorelDRAW and then information such as what Hendrik provided will make perfect sense.

I certainly am biased as to the best resource to learn for you. I'd like you to look at my CorelDRAW X3 Unleashed book as I think it will get you up to speed as fast as anything available. Details on the book and purchasing are all found at http://www.unleash.com/coreldrawx3unleashed/

 

Hi Foster,

 You are correct, I should have a little more knowledge - just so many things to learn and so little time.  I recently purchased your CorelDrawX3 Unleashed CD, and am just starting to work my way through it.  I'm learning the Carving Machine Software AND Machine, trying to figure out Corel - wow, my mind is reeling. 

Food for thought for you - there are about 5,000 new (within the last year) CarveWright machines out there and most of us are new to the Graphics portion of the woodworking business.  A very few of our users (at least on the Forum) are familiar with Corel.  You might want to visit the Forum http://www.carvewright.com/forum/ and see what it is that we need from Corel.  Just might be worth you time to create a tutorial just for the CarveWright/CNC community.  I bet that QUITE a few of our users would be happy to buy the tutorials.  They have been buying CorelDrawX3 like crazy - and all are about as dumb as I am :-)) 

Hi Cajun,

See the attached, I was quite curious about Hendrik's technique. I've
added some shading too.

JD

Hi Jeff, I think you need to zip the cdr (I'm interested in seeing the shading ).

Bill,  You have Foster's book which will definately help.  I'll try to give you a few pointers.

1. Almost everything action I did was one the property bar on the top.  When you're using the pick tool, the property bar will change based on the object selected, so when you select the polygon, you can change the number of sides in the property bar.

2. To convert the sides to curves, you need to select the polygon with the shape tool (found in the toolbox under the pick tool).  In the property bar you'll see buttons to convert segments to curves, make nodes symmetrical, etc.

3. To duplicate an object, you can copy and paste, press ctrl+d, press space, right click while resizing the object, infact, it's hard to find a way not to duplicate the object.

4. When sizing the object, holding shift will resize and keep the center.

5. The smart fill can be found in the toolbox.

6. Weld functions can be found in the property bar when curves are selected.

Regards,
Hendrik

Bill,

I looked briefly at the forums and really don't know where to start. If someone wants to start a "what we need to do in CorelDRAW" thread and send me the results, I'm happy to look them over.

Generally I find that these types of lists don't take into account the information that is already available. I know that when I was researching the X3 book, I asked some folks in tech support what people were asking about since all customers of this company had copies of my book. The information they were asking about was already in the book, they just weren't looking for it or looking in the wrong place.

I'm not familiar with the Carving software you mentioned nor have I worked with a CNC machine. I'm sure it has a few unique requirements. Yet I'll bet that 95% of what people need to know about CorelDRAW is already very well covered.
 

Hi Hendrik,

Wierd... attachment was corrupt (I sent through NNTP, maybe that's why). Here it is again - but zips aren't allowed, I've discovered.


 

Oh dear, still corrupt - I'd posted through web forum with Firefox last time too.

OK here it is off my server:

click here

 

 

 

Nice, the shading looks very good.  I wonder why attachments aren't working.  I'll try a few tests later and if I can't get the attachments to work I'll let Gerard know.

Hendrick - I will get back to work on your idea and see if I can't get it all figured out.   I appreciate the effort and help that you, Jeff and Fluid have given with this little project.  I will have to spend some time learing the basics and then all of the tutorials offered here will make a little more sense.

Foster, you are probaly right - most of the information that I will need is probably already on your Unleashed CD.  It's all just so new and confusing - sometimes we need a shove in the right direction.  This Forum has enlightened me so much already, I am going to work at learning to do what I need to do.

Thanks Jeff, here is a picture of the carving that I will do - using your rope design.  I really appreciate everyones help with this.  I will continue to work at it, until I get the rope design refined mysefl.  The finished plaque will be about 6 1/2" x 4 1/2".

Hi Cajun,

Glad you got it figured out, it's nice to see the final thing on screen as a simulation. :-) There are ways to adjust the curvature of the rope too. By adjusting the grayscale values of the pieces in Draw. (gamma or else BCI)

 very cool indeed. make sure you post a pic of the final carved item. Would be nice to compare to the art.

 

 I will try to get it carved this weekend and will post picture.  It should come out quite nice - the rope border should add quite a bit to the carving.

 Hi Val,

I AM an absolute beginner and thank goodness for the kindness of strangers or I would be jumping up and down on my keyboard most of the time out of pure frustration.  If you don't mind, I'd love to take advantage of your experience and willingness to share.

I have a graphics problem.  I "borrowed" a graphic from online.  I took it into Corel-Paint and cut the graphic out, although even though I outlined it, it still had a square background, but I was able to make that transparent.  Then I turned it into an 8-bit grayscale.  Then I imported it to Coreldraw.  I thought I should run it thru Photograv, but I don't seem to be able to save it as a .bmp, the only extension Photograv will accept.  But in any case, today I tried to run a trial on a ULS M-300 (30w) and although the text and vectoring worked, the graphic didn't.  It was very unclear and fuzzy.  I think I need to darken it up---it shows up as a light gray---so it will engrave darker, but if I go back into Corel Paint and try to edit bitmap, then try to fill, it fills everything.  Is there somewhere where you can click on a color (as a guide) and then change the areas to the color you want?  Instead of popping the graphic right in, should I maybe have printed it off and then scanned it and then tried to play with the attributes?

 

Thanks for any thoughts you might have!

 

 

 

 

OK, there are two questions here that I see. Ask again if there's another one or if what I answer doesn't really apply to the situation. (I'll be gone for an hour or so right after I finish this message.) 1. How do you save as a BMP file from CorelDRAW? That's the easier one to answer. You can only Save As... to vector formats, but you can Export to bitmap formats. From the File menu, choose Export, then you'll get a dialog that's very similar to the Save As... dialog, but the choices for file types will be different. If you open the Options>> button, you can opt to save selected only (probably what you want, rather than the whole page.) When you have your filename and BMP selected, click the Export button. You'll get the Convert to Bitmap dialog. You can choose to maintain the current size of the image or just check the Maintain aspect ratio and change width,height, or resolution. You probably want the Grayscale (8-bit) Color mode. Depending on what you want, you may or may not want the Anti-aliasing checked. Try it both ways, exporting your file to two different file names. Click OK to save the new file. 2. How to darken up a grayscale bitmap image? You can do this either in CorelDRAW or PhotoPaint. It's essentially the same process in either program. I'll tell you first in CorelDRAW since we're already there. (but it's probably not your best choice.) Select your image in CorelDRAW, then go to the Effects menu. Choose Brightness/Contrast/Intensity. In that dialog, you've got three sliders to play with. You might try just moving the Contrast slider to the left. Click the Preview button to see the effect of your change before you make it permanent. (Move the dialog box if necessary so you can see your bitmap.) The contrast slider is the only one that won't affect the color of the "transparent" square area around your object. If you use the other sliders, you'll need to go back into PhotoPaint anyway to get rid of it again. In PhotoPaint, I'd use the magic wand selector tool (in the selectors flyout, in the property bar, choose the + mode to select multiple areas to be added to the "mask") to select the "transparent" area, then go to Mask/Invert. If you don't see the "marching ants" when you click on the image with the magic wand, click on the first "eyeball" in the Standard Tool Bar across the top of the program window. Alternatively, you can use the magic wand on just your gray areas and don't invert the mask. Once you've got just your gray selected, go to the Adjust menu. Choose Brightness/Contrast/Intensity. Play with any of the sliders and it will only affect the part you have selected. Hope that helps! Val P.