At the small rural school where I work we send vector drawings from CorelDraw to our laser cutter, which does a great job in cutting out the drawing in wood. To get the vector drawing we usually scan an image, clean it up with PhotoPaint, convert it to vector with CorelTrace using centerline, clean this vector image up with CorelDraw and then send it to the laser. The scanning, cleaning up, tracing, and cleaning up again process is cumbersome; especially the centerline tracing process that creates lots of little lines that need to be deleted, straightened, etc.
I've experimented with a couple of tablet PC's, a Gateway and an Asus, with mixed results. I put the scanned image on one layer, then on another layer I traced it using the tablet pen. When this works as I want it to I quickly get a vector image that is ready for the laser. However the Gateway was hopeless, the pen did not work well at all. The Asus was much better but not as accurate as I would like. Maybe there is a tablet PC that someone uses in this fashion with CorelDraw? I've been looking at reviews of the Toshiba 700 and the Dell Latitude but nothing in what I read addresses this question directly.
You can bypass so many headaches by learning how to draw and rebuild stuff properly in CorelDRAW. This inexpensive tutorial has saved me hundreds of hours. As the tutorial's author, you have my permission to show your students, as I'm certain it will dramatically change their CorelDRAW experience. It also comes with a macro that allows you to level and straighten selected nodes using shortcut keys. However.. not sure if the macro will work in V 12. But, the drawing method works in any version of CorelDRAW.
Today, no matter how complex a piece of artwork is, I can rebuild it fearlessly & perfectly. The result will also have minimum nodes, which is very important for certain production processes such as vinyl cutting.
standingwave said: The scanning, cleaning up, tracing, and cleaning up again process is cumbersome; especially the centerline tracing process that creates lots of little lines that need to be deleted, straightened, etc.
Jeff Harrison said:Today, no matter how complex a piece of artwork is, I can rebuild it fearlessly & perfectly.
I also enjoy redrawing a logo or etc. It's such a fascinating experience for me, but it gives me plenty of headaches when something is not clear in the Original like this:
How do you cope up with this kind of a situation? Looking forward for ur precious words of wisdom....