CorelDraw users are a minority on here so I thought we needed a place to share ideas among ourselves. There’s little point in debating whether CorelDraw or Illustrator (or Inkscape or any other vector program) is better. What I can say is CorelDraw has worked very well for me for most of the past 20 years and has paid for itself many times over. It fits my work style. I know it’s not the best fit for everyone.
I use it for almost all of my graphic design needs, for everything I send to my vinyl printer/cutter, to the screen printer that prints shirts for me, to the print shop that prints postcards for me, and for some of what I create on my CNC router. I rarely have problems working with other designers/service providers that use Illustrator.
How long have you been using CorelDraw? What do you like best about it?
I too have been using CorelDraw for close to 20 years. I use it for my 2 lasers, my vinyl cutter and graphic arts. My customers send many different file formats that are all easily imported in. I manipulate vectors alot and like the simplicity of it.
One thing that is very useful in cutting thin material is that I can control the direction and layers at which the laser cuts so if i need a sharp edge or cuts close to each other I can have it cut certain lines to let the material cool down before cutting the next…
Also with the corel plugin, I use different colors wth different power and speed settings to do different effects like scoring, etching, engraving and cutting all on one print send.
The powerful trace feature is a must for logo work when working with jpgs and gifs…
It serves all my needs in one amazing program.
I really hope Glowforge @dan will work on getting a CorelDraw Plugin asap…
I had a version of CorelDraw back in the late 80s/early 90s, but didn’t have an ongoing need for it at the time, so haven’t kept it up (I believe it was CorelDraw 3, and it was delivered on 9 floppies, although it was forward thinking enough to include a bunch of extra clipart on one of those new-fangled CDs)
However, I did notice recently that the folks at Laserbits use it too, and if you go to their Software tab, you will find some potentially useful libraries of design patterns available!
I’ve used the Corel graphics suite forever, back before version six even. (when they used to ship a companion book to the manual with all clip art shown… Good times!). Primary software is autocad, but draw and photoshop have always given me what I need re architectural embellishment, straight out artwork, or as a base platform to sketchup and 3D printing. Hopefully the same will ring true for the Glowforge. Cheers all!
Been a Corel Draw user for some time. Can’t remember whether it was vers 1 or 2, but it came in a plain white box with 3.5 inch floppies, a CD and a VHS instructional tape. Since then, I’ve upgraded about every other release, using X6 now but have X7 to be installed when I get the chance. I still have not fully explored all the features and learn new tricks every month or so.
I go to a learning workshop for CorelDraw for laser use through Engravers Network in Texas evey year or so…there are lots of new useful upgrades that I learn something new each time!!
Not that familiar with it, what is the $outlay for the package?
20 years ago I had a 3D drawing program by Micro graphics, Designer4.0. It was just a rendering tool that was really powerful and easy to use. I think Corel bought them out.
It’s on Amazon right now for $360. As @smcgathyfay said, the student version is much cheaper. I originally bought a student copy in the 1990s. When I was in grad school in the early 2000s, I bought a student version of the Adobe suite. When I started making money from my graphic design work, I looked at both products and decided CorelDraw was a better fit for my needs. It’s popular in the t-shirt business, sign making world and in some CNC circles. It’s probably the second most popular graphic design software albeit far behind Adobe in market share.
Since I’ve been using it for many years, I can get an upgrade every few years for around $100.
The trace feature is amazing and has gotten more and more accurate every version.
It can take a decent jpg and trace it near perfect into a vector in seconds…thats a huge time saver since I do alot if custon designs for my customers that send crappy images.lol
Have you read anything about CorelDraw X8? Looks good but probably not anything earth shattering enough to make me upgrade right away. Unless they do some big discount on early upgrades, I’ll probably wait a least a few months or maybe even skip this version all together. I have some 3rd party tools ( http://advancedtshirts.com/ ) that probably won’t be certified for X8 for awhile.
because I really want a CorelDraw plugin…lol