Hi. I am currently working for a company which prints warning label for pharmaceutical companies. My employer draws the triangles for the warning labels in Corel draw one by one to fill up the page and reverses every second one to save paper. This is very tedious and time consuming process and he has tasked me with finding a way to automate this.
I was wondering if there is any way to code macros to fill the page with the shape and to reverse every second one. I have been trying to find ways to code the macro to do this but have had no luck as I think I am out of my depth. If anyone knows how to automate this process with code and a macro it would be greatly appreciated.
The sheets are usually 8-10 shapes across
Thanks in advance
It isn't easy to give an answer without knowing all the details.A macro could probably be a solution but wouldn't it be possible to simply copy and paste?The image below was created from one single triangle in less than one minute in Draw.Is this even close to what you are trying to achieve?Or are they all different perhaps?
Thanks,sorry for the lack of detail,I won't have my work laptop on my for a few days. That design is what we'd be doing yes. We could copy and paste however with the scale our production is increasing to even that is not enough. Would you know of a way to implement any macro to automatically do this. I have made macros to paste the shape all the way across the top line but when I run the macro again it does not continue on to the line below which is also an issue .I'd appreciate any help and thanks for your response.
Are the triangles always the same size, but other content (text, color, etc.) changes from job-to-job?
Understanding the nature of the problem may help others suggest ways that regular CorelDRAW capabilities (e.g., symbols, guidelines, alignment guides, dynamic guides, duplicate-while-drag, repeat previous action, templates) and/or existing macros might be used to make the job faster / easier.
Yes they are always the same size and the only changes are colour and text. But also the amount of triangles as one order may be 25 and another 15 and another 60. The problem in essence is finding a fast way to fill the page with this triangle template based on the amount of triangles needed. I don't even know if this is possible but I thought I'd ask for the opinions of people much more knowledgeable in this field than me.
Is one of your page dimensions always the same? For example, is it always the same width (from a roll of paper), but you make the page height as large as it needs to be to print a specified number of triangles?
Or is this printing on sheet paper, with both width and height always the same?
From as far as I can tell it is always the same width and height, it is the default page size that appears when you open Corel draw. They change the width size in another program called Composer which is when they print it. I think in Corel draw they use this page as a template to then add into composer . So if they need 10 batches of 50 then the Corel draw will hypothetically use the macro (or any other solution) to automate the putting on of the triangles onto the default page and then take this page and multiply it by ten into Composer,edit it and then print.
If I correctly understand what you are doing, then this is one possible approach.
You can open that document, save it as a copy, and then edit the definition of the symbol. All instances of the Symbol will then update to match the changes you have made.
Eskimo approach is likely perfect if you like symbols...One approach is perhaps also to create a master object put that on a separate page.On your 'output' page or page templates create CLONES of the master object.Create as many fixed size page templates as required.Create as many clones as required for these pages.Completely populate the template pages with the cloned objects.If the graphic needs to change change the master object(s).
If the quantity of the objects needs to change DELETE what is not required on the template or output pages.
>>> "Sometimes deleting is faster than adding".
Ok thank you for the advice
That approach will only work so long as there is no paragraph text in the master. I too would have suggested cloning but it does require a full understanding of how to work with clones i.e. what you can and cannot do without breaking the particular property link to the master.
In this case I do think symbols would be a more reliable approach.