I design parts and assemblies in Solidworks. Sometimes I am asked to provide line art for technical illustrations in manuals. I bring the 3D cad assembly into a 2D drawing placed in a particular position. I then output a .dxf or even a .pdf that I provide to the tech pubs people that they use with Corel or Illustrator. We are thinking of starting to do our manuals with the sort of style where the line art illustration uses two line weights. here is something I didn't create but found with a google image search for technical illustration styles.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-lFPuPhG-viWnRtOTA2YW80WE0
In the example the whole thing is outlined but so are some of the features. I would mind a simple technique that can automate the selection of all the outside borderlines. I can pick the few lines that are interior to that manually selecting them.
I think there are some expensive additions to Solidworks that can do this but I am wondering if there are some tricks in Coreldraw to accomplish this other than select lines by line or with selective windows across the outlines. Making manual selection even more of pain I am finding with X8 that when i do select more than one line element with a shift select or with a window select I lose the line weight entry box in the toolbar.
steve krause said:a simple technique that can automate the selection of all the outside borderlines.
I think the possibilities for that would have a lot to do with how the 2-D curves come into CorelDRAW when they are imported. If I do something similar with a PDF from Autodesk Inventor, it LOOKS good in CorelDRAW, but it's a big mess of curves that doesn't lend itself well to creating a closed outline of the whole part.
One thing you might consider would be converting it to a 1-bit bitmap in CorelDRAW, then using PowerTrace to trace that to get different vector content to work with that might be easier to get a closed curve from.
The import from PDF looks like this:
After converting to bitmap, then doing a Centerline trace, I had three curves. After deleting the two curves that represented the holes, I had one curve that looked like this:
That's all one curve, so it was easy to use the Eraser tool to tear it up enough to not leave any closed "islands" in it:
That outline is "tight" enough that Smart Fill works on it:
...so there's a closed curve of the outline, ready to apply whatever outline style you wish to it, then clear the fill.
If I use the procedure above on a copy of the original imported PDF content after pasting it into a higher layer, then when I switch the layer with the original stuff back on, it looks like this:
Your mileage may vary...
I think I understand the strategy. Make a single outline by erasing everything inside. Fill it because by erasing the inside stuff it can be a closed curve if the centerline trace attached all the outer lines together. Change the line weight to heavier. Then clear the fill and lay that on a copy of the original.
The image I have is not cooperating after I do a centerline fill to try to get something easy to erase. It seems it would be just as easy with this particular image to not convert to bitmap and instead manually select and delete all the interior objects leaving only the outline that gets heavier and composite that layer over the original.
link to a file
Thinking about this more, I think that some bitmap editing tools might set this up much, much better for PowerTrace.
After converting the imported vector content to bitmap, I can edit the bitmap in Photo-Paint. With the Magic Wand mask, it's very easy to select everything outside the outline (like, only two or three clicks). Invert that mask, fill with black, and get this:
In CorelDRAW, then, I can use PowerTrace for an outline trace. Since all of the interior content is gone, the resulting outline is very simple.
Since the trace follows the outside of the original lines, I would probably start with the thinnest outline that would work properly with the Magic Wand mask.
I have several versions of CorelDRAW installed, and I think something is messed up with file associations so that I can't directly "Edit Bitmap" from CorelDRAW to edit in Photo-Paint. So, I show this just as a potential workflow idea.
I've never been very comfortable with the pixel editing tools of Photopaint (or Photoshop) and the layers and masks stuff. My recollection of Draw from the past is that when I did a convert to bitmap it would launch Photopaint to allow editing in Photopaint. Can't remember how it automatically came back to Draw. Maybe all PP edits were seen in Draw. That would make sense.
But with Draw X8 when I do a Convert to Bitmap it doesn't automatically launch PP. So then I figure I will do the conversion and Copy it to clipboard and then launch PP and paste it into PP so that I can proceed with your suggested Magic Wand mask. But the screen appears blank in PP after the paste.
When everything is working smoothly, including file associations (or so I have read), with the bitmap selected in CorelDRAW, you should be able to go to Bitmaps->Edit Bitmap.
When this is working correctly, it lets one edit in Photo-Paint, then it bounces right back to CorelDRAW with the changes in place in the bitmap.
Again, I have multiple versions of CorelDRAW, and I'm sure that something is messed up with that, but I haven't dug into it because it's not something that I need very often
OK, I did a repair of my x8 installation, and the "Edit bitmap" stuff works correctly with Photo-Paint. One nice thing is that it is editing the bitmap that is already in CorelDRAW, and it stays aligned with the copy of the original imported stuff that I kept on another layer.I think that if one got some of the settings "dialed in" for this - line thickness to use before converting to bitmap, and the settings to use for PowerTrace - then this "generate the overall outline" procedure could be quick and easy.To make it even easier in Photo-Paint, before converting to a bitmap, I drew a no-outline rectangle around the part. That means that there is no part of the outine that is kissing the edge of the generated bitmap. So, one click with the magic wand, and the mask is ready to invert and then fill.For the part you showed earlier, would you be willing to let me try this workflow with the PDF file you are using? If you are, but would prefer not to post the file here, then send me a private message through the forum, and we'll find a different way.
How did you do the repair? I guess I need to do this too. Is this done how other window apps repairs are done in the windows > control panel > programs and features.? I went there and I even get an error when i click the Corel X8 listing. Or did you do the repair of the X8 installation in a different more hands on way tweaking associations or settings.
As for the actual pdf file that I am using to learn this you certainly can grab it. Below the small image in a few postings above this there is a "link to a file" hyper link that I think can get you the pdf. if that doesn't work I will send it directly to you.
steve krause said:How did you do the repair? I guess I need to do this too. Is this done how other window apps repairs are done in the windows > control panel > programs and features.? I went there and I even get an error when i click the Corel X8 listing.
That's how I requested the repair. In this case, it asked for my install DVD. I think that's because I chose, on installation, not to have optional "to enable repair" material to be installed on the system.
I hadn't noticed earlier that you had a link to that file. The procedure I described earlier - converting to bitmap and then using Photo-Paint to edit the bitmap before tracing - can be used on that file with a little tweaking to some details in the procedure.
For this one, I had to make the outline 0.5 points in order to get a bitmap that would allow the magic wand in Photo-Paint to find an unbroken outline around the whole shape.
To get it to work well, I converted to bitmap in CorelDRAW at less than the maximum 300 dpi resolution (I used 200). If I do it at 300 for this drawing, then the bitmap is large enough that PowerTrace has to reduce the bitmap before tracing, and that didn't produce a clean outline.
Results look like this, which is a curve with 137 nodes:
If I make the layer underneath visible so that this outline is on top of the original:
I've gotten lost.
- prior to doing the convert to bitmap does the no outline rectangle drawn (drawn in Draw, not in PP because PP isn't yet launched) outside the boundaries of the whole image have both a no fill and no outline? Not sure what it is doing?
- After the Convert to Bitmap step do you use Edit Bitmap to get into PP and use the erase tool? Or are you deleting interior vector elements when in Draw to get that outline image above that is empty inside the outline.