Black background

Hi Chris,

welcome to the CorelDRAW community!

Please take a look at this discussion on the subject of black/ dark background in Corel DESIGNER: http://community.coreldraw.com/forums/t/38883.aspx

You can add a background color to your document (it will use the page border and you still have white space around the page) or you can create a rectangle at your intended max screen size (larger than the page) and place that on a master layer (so that it appears on all pages) that is set to the back (use the Object Manager docker for creating and moving the layer) and also set to not printable (press the printer icon next to the layer name in the Object Manager). That way all objects on that layer stay visible on screen but won't be included when you print or export your drawing.

Inverting line colors (making white lines black etc.) for printout is not a functionality included with Corel DESIGNER.

Corel DESIGNER works with pages, similar to the layout sheets in a CAD application. There is no concept of a model space as you find it in CAD applications so you're operating in WYSIWYG mode all the time, with colors appearing on screen as the appear in your published files.

Best regards,
Klaus. 

I think you could do that, but I'm describing X6 so you may have to make some adjustments for X5:

• Create a new document 
• Go to Layout > Page Background and choose the option solid, colour black, print and export bitmap, click OK
• Back in the document, make sure nothing is selected, go to the colour palette and left click on the white square. Select all the "change document defaults" options, click OK
• Go back to the colour palette and right click on the white square. Select all the "change document defaults" options, click OK
• Go to tools > save settings as default if you want this to be your default for future documents too.

This allows you to edit with the default as white on black.

Then when you print go to the prepress tab and select invert in paper and film settings, so that it prints as black on white,

There is a limitation with this method: if your design page is smaller than your printer page, the area outside the page will print as black. You can fix that by adding a large, locked, black rectangle behind all your objects.

This works, but on my printer the white is coming out slightly grey. So you may need to experiment with colour management (possibly, turn it off) to get the best print using this method.

Try it with some simple documents first, in case the results are not what you expect. And remember that there will be limitations -- for instance, you will probably not be able to export to other formats using this method.