I ventured to Adobe Illustrator due it being "industry-standard" and the massive support I could find for it on youtube and through search.
I miss corel but there are a few things I really love in Illustrator and somethings I hate.
What I like and wish draw was able to get inspired from
1. shaper tool. it's so intuitive I use it all the time. Just select multiple objects and either add them subtract them or create new shapes from them. sort of like a dynamic shape weld tool
2. be able to round any corner. this is plain awesome. draw allows rounding only it's own shapes and once they are curves they are no longer able to be rounded. in illustrator this can be done on every shape that has a corner.
3. appearance tool. allows multiple effects on the shape which can be adjusted copied etc. so suppose I have a contour/stroke I can keep on adding to it without converting it to curves (and hence not allow any adjustments)
4. asset export. why doesn't draw have this already. not only can I export each individual asset but also entire group or artboard/page. This alone is a huge time saver.
5. smooth tool. draw a wobbly shape. go over it with smooth tool. bam. your wobbly shape is no longer wobbly. this is such a great tool.
now what I miss from draw that Illusttstor needs to do
1. shortcuts are a mess in illustrator. draw has the best shortcuts and I can add as many as I want. illustrator limits customizing shortcuts significantly.
2. layers are not tied to artboards so again a huge mess. I hardly ever use layers in draw because I dont need to but illustrator without layers is impossible to manage
3. power clip. I miss you so much. illustrator clipping mask is so complicated that it just frustrates me. they dont even allow cropping images without a mask.
4. tables and formatting tools like bullets and numbering. I understand indesign has this covered but such a simple and important thing needs to be in illustrator. numbering is missed also in draw but that's a discussion for another time.
5. integration with photoshop like draw has with photo-paint. I could do simple edits in paint without opening it as a separate program. with photoshop I need to edit save and import/place.
well. these are 5 things I want in draw and 5 that I miss in draw. let me know what you think.
BOTH CorelDraw and Illustrator are GREAT. They both have their pros and cons. But the same results can be accomplished depending on the solutions you have, and to tell you truth, Adobe products will get you there... it's the industry standard and it works. There is also many other software that can too... use them all, or just use 1, it's up to you how you get that done and the money you get for it.
Yes and no. Using Adobe products for large signage and donor walls is a non starter.
You simply cannot use scale when high accuracy is required. Running 50 or 80 feet of staggered cut glass or acrylic will induce an error. EVERY job I get like that which originates in AI has serious scaling errors.
It's impossible to scale 27' 6 & 9/16".
Just out of curiosity I tried drawing a 330.5625" wide box at four different scales in Adobe Illustrator, 50%, 25%, 10% and 1/12. The boxes should be 165.28125", 82.640625", 33.05625" and 27.546875" in length. Adobe Illustrator doesn't display more than 4 decimal points in its transform box; you have to type out the full value and trust that Illustrator will record it properly. CorelDRAW by default displays up to 3 decimal points, but can be set to display up to 6 decimal points.
When the boxes are imported into CorelDRAW they measure: 165.281248" (50%), 82.640622" (25%), 33.056252" (10%) and 27.546878" (1/12). Those are errors of .000002" or .000003" above or below where they should be. Scaled to full size the boxes measure 330.562496," 330.562488," 330.56252" and 330.562535". So, yeah, they're not dead-on perfect. But no one is going to be able to visually tell the difference between material cut on a routing table at .5625" versus 562496" or 56252."
While CorelDRAW does display up to 6 decimal points, it does not maintain that level of precision. Even on objects with fairly round dimensions it will sometimes display .999996", .000002" or other nonsense like that after the "round" number. I end up switching CorelDRAW back to just displaying 3 digits so the number values in the box don't look so annoying.
The other ridiculous thing is there is not a routing table on the planet able to cut a single sheet of material nearly 28' long. There are no routing tables bigger than Illustrator's maximum art board size. I can buy a coiled roll of clear polycarbonate longer than 28', but a length that long will have to be cut off the roll by hand. When I design things that are going to be cut on a routing table I have to consider the material sizes available, such as 48" X 96".
Hopefully Adobe will update Illustrator to be able to handle large scale designs. Going beyond the 227" X 227" limit is one of the most often mentioned feature requests in Adobe's forums, including the beta forum.