HI.
Was working with a customer today. I was designing something on the screen while he watched. I figured I could use the contour tool on some text and Draw started it's usual delay...
Anyways about 30 seconds later I was beginning to wonder and started feeling a little embarrassed. I first told him this just takes a minute. A little more time went by and I felt the need to distract him or spark up a little conversation while we wait for the effect.
Anyways it finally finished, but then we had to adjust to size of the contour, so the story begins all over again.
Anyways to finally get the job done I fired up Flexi, quickly made the needed contour, exported back to Draw.It was a little embarrassing and a let down for me to make excuses for the CorelDraw to my customer. As anyone who uses the contour tool a lot, well let's hope it gets a much needed overhaul in X7.
This is my official gripe with the contour tool, and my experience of not only how it made me feel today in front of my customer, but many times in the past.
~John
Hello John; My Contour works with no problem, but I wished the Extrude did better. ( Are you using that HOT laptop?) lol
George
I thought John was taking about shapes. Text has been a problem for a long time, and I'm sure they'll fix it this time around. ( MAYBE )
Just overall speed is the main thing, and yes the bug whereas contour cannot over come node problems is still in X6 and happens with even the best of fonts. I encounter this bug almost daily.
For production we need a contour tool that performs and fast, no waiting, no fooling around. I have had to rely on other software for years and just as I hoped with each new version of Draw, I once again re-hope with upcoming X7.
From what I see nothing much has changed as far as this tool. X3 received some node reduction, but I think this fix was a workaround and the contour tool still used the same code, because after this the contours were also less accurate.
X4 received rounded corners, only accessible via VBA, X5 nothing, and then X6 finally put a simple button to access corners that were available already in X4.
Let's get serious Corel, serious production needs serious tools. Overhaul this one and I'll be one happy camper.
IE, for vinyl cutting: I use an alternative program's contour tool to thicken thin fonts and designs, which in turns enables ease of weeding, cutting, and the durability of decals. Besides just thin fonts the ability to quickly vector thicken anything is needed and important for production. Generally I like to thicken an item by radius anywhere from a very tiny amount such as .002 up to .02 of and inch or larger, and usually with rounded corners. This is a use for the contour tool that is strictly for production.
Hi John,
You should probably post files you have trouble with. I've tried it on 100's of fonts and had no issue, so the only way we'll fix these issues are if we have actual files that demonstrate it.
HI Hendrik.
Here ya go. I work with the contour tool a lot and see this all day long. You never know what character or curve shape it will happen on. Here's a jpg image and the cdr file.
If we can get this licked that would be great. My initial reason for the post was the speed of the contour, for which it surely has improved. Almost there but it needs to be faster and able to handle more complex shapes. I will try and post a descriptive example for that too.
PS, yes, this is X6 fully up to date.
Thanks,
Thanks, I'll get a but logged for this, hopefully we can improve it for X7.
Hendrik Wagenaar said: Thanks, I'll get a but logged for this, hopefully we can improve it for X7.
Hi.
That's great. I feel like this is my bug, and I don't want it! I have been pushing to get it fixed for so long now. Thanks to everyone who confirmed and didn't pass it off as a problem with the nodes. It will make my day when I can use the contour tool and truly depend on it.
Don't forget the speed issue on complex shapes, perhaps a live mode to preview how the contour will be before applying, and a cancel operation. This is handy in case it takes to long (which it shouldn't if we can get speed improved) , so you can still cancel out.
RunFlaCruiser said: Hi. That's great. I feel like this is my bug, and I don't want it! I have been pushing to get it fixed for so long now. Thanks to everyone who confirmed and didn't pass it off as a problem with the nodes. It will make my day when I can use the contour tool and truly depend on it. Don't forget the speed issue on complex shapes, perhaps a live mode to preview how the contour will be before applying, and a cancel operation. This is handy in case it takes to long (which it shouldn't if we can get speed improved) , so you can still cancel out. Thanks,
For what it's worth, we fixed most of the contour bugs that we were aware of in x6 (there were about 15 customer files we had that failed in X5, that now work in X6). One of our test files have about 200 fonts, a-b0-9, contoured 50 steps each. These all succeeded in X6 (several failed in X5). We also doubled the speed between x5 and x6. As you can see, there actually was a lot of work on contours in x6, but unfortunately, we didn't catch every case.
Many of the issues are due to unexpected curves in the fonts (even professional fonts, or fonts shipped with windows). That's not to say we shouldn't handle these, we should, but until we know about them, we don't know that we need to fix them. As mentioned, hopefully we have time to improve this for X7.