When I join 2 lines that are dashed (or dotted, I don't know wich is the correct name) there's no "corner". See picture below. In one of the corners the lines doesn't meet. In the other there's a "cut-out". What can I do to fix this?
Hello zitalena; you are right I couldn't get them to line up in X6, X4 If you convert the lines to "Bitmaps" then aline them they work fine. ( IT LOOKS LIKE YOU FOUND A "BUG" IN X6 NO ONE ELSE HAS. ) Be low a screen shot of X4.
George
HI.
I recall Jeff had a macro on his site for that. I think it was coupon creator but I can't remember for sure.
Break your square apart at the four corners so it would be 4 lines instead. Then make each line dotted. This might work.
~John
If you need to do that urgently, you could try doing it with a blend.
Place a small vertical rectangle (representing one dash) where the top left corner should be, a copy of the rectangle in the bottom left corner and do an appropriate number of blend steps in between. Repeat for the right side, and again for top and bottom but with the rectangles horizontal.
John: it's not a square... it's 2 lines. What you see is a small part of a flowchart.
Lena
harryLondon: I am sorry, I don't have an idea of what you are talking about... I do not know this program well. The only thing I do is draw flowcharts with set symbols... What is blend?
What I have done before is making a small corner 2 x 2 mm of the right width. These I manually place on all the corners. That works fine for printing, but when you look at it in Acrobat (wich doesn't always show things right) it looks strange. But I guess I will have to continue with this solution... Below a print screen from a pdf. You can see the corners, but it looks right when printed.
I'll try to explain the blend method in more detail when I get some free time.
Meanwhile, here's a different method that's easier and might do instead.
Step 1: Draw a solid line ...
Step 2: Duplicate the line and make it narrower, white and dotted ...
Even though the corners still do not fit perfecty, the outline makes them look a lot neater.
Thanks for your answer, but an outlined dotted line is not the answer. Sorry. There are rules how lines and symbols should look like.
The SignGuy: If you just align them it wont work, as the end is not always a line (it could be a space). I have no idea of how to convert to a bitmap, but will it print properly?
What I did here was to change the thickness of the lines, but instead of joining 2 lines used the 'Freehand Tool' to make a continuous flow:
OK. Maybe a stupid question (I only use a fraction of Corel Draw and know nothing of the rest). What is Freehand Tool and how did you use it?
Why did you change the thickness? I have set line thicknesses that I can't change, so I don't understand this... Sorry if I am a nuisance...
There are no stupid questions -- the only way one can learn is to ask.
See if this helps any:
But that's the way I draw my lines... Just me, not being familiar with all the English terms. Now I look back at your former post and wonder how you got the 2 lines to look like a corner when they are not joined. You said you changed thickness, wich I can't, but why? And how?
(Did I say I am a confused Swede?)
And PS. My workday is over in 7 minutes. So if someone replies I am not rude for not writing back....
Lena Hanson said:You said you changed thickness, wich I can't, but why? And how?
Try this then -- with your lines selected (clicked on to show little black squares in corners) select the 'pen nub' and choose your line thickness:
I'm experimenting with a macro ...
So far tested only with the three lines in the example above, so might take a while to get into a usable form, or might even prove to be impractical in real use.
Graewerld, you misunderstood me... Of course I can change the line width. But I CAN'T as I have to have a set line width that I can't deviate from. There are rules I have to follow, standards...
So, here's my experimental macro dashgen.gms to try out. I've done limited testing in X4 and 32 bit X6 but I'd expect it to work in X5 too.
It needs to be installed in the appropriate GMS folder, which is probably:
Change drive letter, user name and X6 above, as appropriate.
You should now be able to select and run the DashGen macro from either tools > macros or the macro toolbar.
Use it with a document containing lines that already have the dash attribute. But keep a copy of the original first, in case anything goes wrong.
It works on selected objects, but try it first with just one dashed line, to tune the values as needed (remember, it converts only dashed lines.
Undo (control-Z) works as expected, and will probably be needed while experimenting with the parameters. You cannot change the characteristics of a converted line, except by using the undo. When you have the values correct, save them for the future.
You can then try selecting multiple objects. Only lines and rectangles with the dash attribute will be converted. Others should be skipped, but there are currently some limitations -- for instance, including a blend in the selection will crash.
Thank you! WOW! I did as you suggest above, and I can find it if I click Tools/Macros/Run macro then select it. But:
1. The 3 values, what are those and how do they work?
2. Something is wrong... I set the numbers you had in your example, and clicked on Generate after selecting a dashed line:
What happened?
Something else happened too. This is what I did:
I opened my drawing. Saved as test. Tried as above in my test-file. Closed the drawing without saving it. Opened the original drawing. I have a lot of filled circles where 2 lines meet, or where a symbol is connected to a pipe. About 50 % of the filled circles were totally gone. The other half were unfilled. I unloaded the macro. No change. I closed Corel and opened it again, without saving my drawing. Phew. My drawing looked as it should again. What was that?
It looks like my final revisions yesterday did not save properly, hence the compile error. Let me try this again.
OK, new version attached.
I also modified the selection criteria to ensure that only dashed lines and rectangles, not circles or other shapes, are processed. Though as before, the lines must be horizontal or vertical.
As before, please keep a copy of original files in case of problems.
The date and time is the date and time I download it, so I can't check.
Thanks... but it doesn't work... This is how it looks like now
I selected the line that were inside my lower marking. Look at the other marking, that's where the macro says that the line was...
You are getting a very wide line thickness, which I think might happen if your regional settings need a decimal comma rather than decimal dot. I'm not sure if VBA handles regional settings internally, perhaps I need to do something for it if that is the problem.
What are you seeing as default in the thickness box? Is it 0.1 or 0,1 ? Whichever you have, you could try putting the other in,
Another possibility is that you have a world scale, which my calculations are probably ignoring.