Long time CorelDRAW user here, first time posting, hi!
I am struggling with node snapping at full zoom. This seems to produce quite inaccurate results, something I have found out to already been discussed around these forums, not for node snapping though; seems to me as if this is something that might never truly get fixed, correct me if I am wrong. So I am looking for workarounds, tricks, ideas on how to minimize the damage these inaccuracies cause.
We are in a 300 dpi CMYK document (could be 600 dpi just as well, my testing gets me the same results), sized for a B1 poster (707 x 1000 mm) at full 240471% zoom. Snap to objects is on and working. The four blue objects you see below are squares that I have turned into curves and moved their nodes around.
I will be moving the three selected nodes (individually of course) to the corner node of the shape that is bottom right as to get them in the same place. (I promise the nodes are already joined properly on their other ends, not visible in these screenshots.)
Sadly the best result I can get is far from ideal, as can be seen above. All four nodes should be in the same place, but they are clearly not, even though they have been moved around snapping. Instead of one node position there are four plus a bunch of new intersections (caused by nodes not being in the same place).
This comes out nicely most of the time zooming out or exporting for print, but in this case the white line seems to be visible even after exporting.
I have tried to hide this issue with hairlines of the same color, but this seems to cause even more troubles up close.
What I have found out to be working best is carefully moving nodes beyond the other shapes and setting the object layer order so it makes most sense. It is not even close to perfect, but zoomed out and/or exporting gets better results (less white gaps).
My first question would be why is this even happening, but I guess I am beyond that. So, are there any other workarounds, solutions or settings I could try?
I think CorelDRAW is a pretty awesome tool for vectors (I prefer it over AI tbh), but bugs like this one, hmmm ...
Cheers
mmmm, not seeing that here CDR 2018.
Maybe time to reset CDR back to factory defaults.
Repaired installation (it said it did repair, but no info about what was done) and reset factory/default settings on launch (F8 + launch), problem persists on my end.
Same objects, export/import/repair nodes in Adobe Illustrator, export/import back to CorelDRAW -- fixed. I don't really get it.
Would it be possible to post the file (or at least the important parts of it)?You may have to zip it first to get it through.
ProblematicNodes.zip
Here you go.
I observe the same problem that you do when trying to reposition nodes on those shapes at very high zoom.
I suspect - and Ronny touches on that possibility in his post - that this is some fundamental limitation with how CorelDRAW is trying to solve a geometry problem. It doesn't have infinitely fine resolution for the values it is using (node positions, segment lengths, angles) to describe the geometry. So, for a given curve, in order to move a node to some specific location, something else in that curve might need to be changed very slightly.
As a workaround, to get the node-on-node alignment you want, you could start by moving each shape using snaps to get those four nodes at the same location. Then, use individual node positioning to adjust the positions of the other nodes in the shapes, as necessary.
In this video, I start by showing the behavior you describe. I then use the approach I describe above. In this example, after getting the initial node-on-node alignment by moving the shapes, only one additional tweak was needed.
VIDEO: problematic nodes
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Eskimo, yep, that works. Thank you so much for figuring it out. Moving individual nodes snapping seems to really be glitched then? Something worth reporting to Corel or is this forums it? (New user, not familiar with how things work around here.)
My illustration is made out of maybe 100 of those triangles, I have noticed this issue too late, so it should be a nightmare to fix it this way using CorelDRAW, but hey, that's my problem now. Switching to Adobe Illustrator probably.
I'm a little curious to how you created these objects in the first place.I tried to recreate them with the Pen tool, Snap to Objects on of course, and the result was perfect when zooming in at highest level.Also tried to first create the outer edges and inner lines individually, and then fill the areas with the Smart Fill tool.Perfect fit.So my conclusion is that Draw is definitely accurate enough but there seems to be a limitation in how individual nodes can be moved around.
Cannot say for sure how they were created, because I tried out many things during the conceptual phase.
Worst case scenario: outline tracing from raster, rotating, trimming, welding, node moving, node removing, maybe even perspective, but that is it. It is vectors though, theoretically should not really matter, right?
Theoretically, no.Sometimes we have to accept limitations in an app (CorelDraw as well as any other) though, and adapt our workflow to these shortcomings.I fully agree that it should be possible to move nodes the way you expect, but there is probably a reason why we can move objects but not nodes, something that may not be there in Illustrator's code.Hopefully they will be able to fix it in the future but while waiting we have to accept and use the workarounds we have.FWIW, I have several times found better and more efficient ways to work while trying to work around a limitation, ways that I probably never would have thought of if everything worked as expected.
Working around limitations can be a positive (creative) challenge, sure, but maybe not while one is under anxiety-inducing deadlines though
Looking at this again yesterday afternoon, I noticed something that seems to make a difference here.
The shapes all show as being scaled by 3153.3% horizontally, and 2772.8% vertically. So, the definition of those shapes in CorelDRAW is being done with values that are being scaled by factors of ~31 and ~28, respectively. I can imagine that could cause problems.
If one has a lot of these to do, it's probably worth putting the "Weld" command button on a toolbar and/or assigning a shortcut key to the command. With that, it's a single button click or a single keystroke to get a shape that will behave much better with respect to being able to do finer node editing.