I come from the architecture industry, and used to use Coreldraw or Adobe Illustrator for most vector "graphics", and then would make technical drawings in AutoCAD. Now I am in the sign industry (big fabricated 3-dimensional signs, CNC, etc.), and working in an office that is making their shop drawings directly in CorelDraw (where they were started as more conceptual drawings). Paper shop drawings go Corel to pdf, but digital cutting files go Corel to CNC-specific program.
I'm in charge of imagining how we might change our software ecosystem (We will/do have some Solidworks for technical 3D stuff, Sketchup for conceptual 3D stuff). Anyway, my question is- on the ground, what are the big differences between Corel's Draw vs Designer vs CAD? It's hard for me to go back in time and think of every CAD function I've ever used, and then think "does Corel have that?"...short of just jumping into a project, and realizing half-way through that I'm missing a really useful function.
One big thing that comes to mind is AutoCAD's way of using "blocks". Do any of the Corel options have a way to save a drawing of a bolt, as a block, so then I can edit 1 instance of it and all 50 bolts in the drawing will update? Or a way of after the fact, quickly/easily asking "how many instances do I use this particular block?".
Or any other critical differences among the three, or between the three and other technical software?
nboyce:
Re AutoCAD's "blocks"
Corel has a feature called "symbols." You access this feature through the Symbols option of the Edit menu. Once you define a part of the drawing, say a bolt, as a symbol, you can use multiple instances of it in the drawing. If you change the symbol, all instances of it are changed.
Otto
nboyce said:Do any of the Corel options have a way to save a drawing of a bolt, as a block, so then I can edit 1 instance of it and all 50 bolts in the drawing will update? Or a way of after the fact, quickly/easily asking "how many instances do I use this particular block?".
The best way to quickly see what CorelCAD is all about is installing the trial version (download from www.corel.com/corelcad). You will notice that your AutoCAD experience will help a lot in becoming familiar with CorelCAD and you will be able to use your existing DWG files to give it a try.
As Otto mentioned, in CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER you can use symbols that follow a similar concept.
Corel DESIGNER is a technical oriented derivative application of CorelDRAW. You will find a lot of similarities between the 2, and Corel DESIGNER adds technical functionality that the creative design oriented CorelDRAW doesn't offer. This includes:
Both CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER share a common code base which means they can read & write each other's files with no conversion/ compatibility effects to be expected.
CorelDRAW Technical Suite includes both Corel DESIGNER and CorelDRAW, so you still have all the familiar tools with CorelDRAW plus add the special technical illustration features of Corel DESIGNER to the workflow.
CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER are both 2D vector graphics applications. You can create isometric drawings (technical views - "2 1/2 D") with Corel DESIGNER but it's still all 2D vector drawings.
With CorelCAD, you can design in 2D and 3D, and you're 100% compatible to other DWG based CAD applications (supporting all the known concepts such as blocks, external references, model space and layout sheets, etc.).