CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2017

Issue #945

 

by Ralph Grabowski with Klaus Vossen CorelDraw is famous for being packed -- some might say "saturated" -- with supplemental programs and libraries of content. Even a decade ago, we were wondering, "What more could Corel Corp add?"  Well, there is CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2017, to which Corel adds CAD-friendly functions. Corel senior product manager of technical graphics Klaus Vossen describes it as "a complete suite for communications and authoring technical documents." The company took CorelDraw, the vector-based drawing package, and then added tools useful for a technical audience. But not purely that, as it is also used by creative marketing types. The idea behind CorelDRAW Technical Suite is that a manufacturing company generates 3D models from its CAD programs, and then the technical documentation team and the marketing people import the 3D models, adjust the views -- even explode them -- then place them as 2D vector images in CorelDraw. Mr Vossen said that sometimes in large corporations CorelDRAW Technical Suite is used as the generic graphics tool for all users; the one package and its many modules replaces several programs (see Figure 1): Corel DESIGNER Lattice3D Studio Corel Edition CorelDRAW Corel PHOTO-PAINT Corel CONNECT Corel CAPTURE Corel PowerTRACE Plus WhatTheFont (for identifying fonts), Barcode Wizard (for generating barcodes), 4,000 CAD symbols, 10,000 clip art images, 1,000 fonts, and more. FIGURE 1. The many parts of CorelDraw Technical Edition (all images sourced from Corel Corp) In an hour, Mr Vossen showed me multiple demos of new functions in the core software, which I am sharing with you here. More Customizable User Interface The user interface of CorelDRAW Technical Suite can be scaled independently of Windows. This is useful when I work with two monitors that have different resolutions (like I do). It supports 5K [5120×2880 resolution] and DPI-independent monitors, as well as pens, touches, and even Microsoft's new Surface Dial input hardware. The UI can be set to a dark color theme (see Figure 2). This, apparently, is trendy today among some software programs. I can't stand the dark UI, as we had enough of it in the days of DOS and I see no need to return to the dark ages. Fortunately, Corel offers not just all-dark or all-light UI themes, but also a medium theme. The border color of the CorelDRAW Technical Suite windows can be specified. This makes Corel stand out from other programs running at the same time. FIGURE 2. Corel Designer in its new dark UI Workspaces from previous versions can be imported. Repurposing 3D The Basic version of CorelDRAW Technical Suite now imports 3D solid geometry through IGES files; it used to import only 3D polygons. A reduced-function version of Lattice3D Studio has been included all along to view 3D models, disassemble them, and save as 3D snapshots. New is that all snapshots can be sent to CorelDesigner at one time -- which saves them as 2D vector diagrams. The Advanced version of CorelDRAW Technical Suite automatically detects when 3D geometry is modified, so that it updates all snapshots. If I don't want that to happen automatically, I turn off auto mode. Nevertheless, auto updates lets me create 2D snapshots of 3D models long before they are finalized, and then have them update later in the design process in just a few minutes. CorelDesigner now applies transparency to selected parts (see Figure 3). This lets me see through the vector illustration and to the shaded model underneath. FIGURE 3. Making parts selectively transparent in CorelDraw Technical Editing Tools Once the 3D model is made, 2D illustrations is where most of the work is done by technical illustrators and the marketing department. Sometimes, however, imported 3D CAD data is not as accurate as we like to think, such as when lines don't meet. This problem is not so uncommon in older CAD systems or files translated through HPGL [Hewlett-Packard graphics language] and other low-accuracy formats. A new boundary tool in CorelDesigner handles gaps with tolerance control. CorelDesigner has always had tools for drawing in isometric and other projected modes. New in 2017 is dimensioning in isometric mode, with separate values in different view projections. Editing Photos CorelDesigner can do some photo editing functions without needing to launch Corel PhotoPaint (which is included in the suite). With the 2017 release, CorelDesigner corrects perspective distortions, and adds the healing clone and smart carver tools. These are useful when photos are used for technical documentation. Mr Vossen says photos are used when 3D models are not available. Publishing to Industry Standards Among technical documentationists, 'exporting' is called "publishing." CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2017 supports over 100 file formats, plus RAW formats from cameras and other digital devices. One common format, CGM (computer graphics metafile), now supports additional profiles, such as those used in aerospace for aircraft documentation. The CGM export dialog box has even more settings than before, but nicely grays out settings that should not be modified, according to the selected standard. Internationalizing Diagrams Companies often minimize the text in illustrations to international their products more easily. Think IKEA instructions with word balloons that consist solely of '!' or '?'. But sometimes text is required, such as displayed by the menus of digital cameras and smartphones. Corel uses XML files with the Translation Memory System software to translate, import, and then change the language in diagrams. New in 2017 is text formatting, such as text styles that change the color or font of specific pieces of text.  It used to be that CorelDesigner needed ten language files to support ten languages per diagram. The 2017 release has language-based layers, so that all ten can be in a single diagram. These are simply regular layers I toggle on and off. There is no dynamic link; when I change a word, the equivalent word on the other layers do not update, so I need to reimport the XML files. I can write a macro that turns layers on and off sequentially to output in each document in its own language. Corel Corp, no surprise, uses this system itself. New LiveSketch LiveSketch is a new vector design program from Corel that uses AI [artificial intelligence] to adjust to my strokes as I sketch on a touch screen monitor. It's useful for tracing photos when an illustration is to be based on a picture, or to add info to diagrams. See Figure 4. FIGURE 4. Using LiveSketch on a tablet Licenses and Pricing "At Corel, we continue to give choice to our users," emphasized Mr Vossen. "Subscription is not the preferred option for most of our customers." Nevertheless, Corel expands the choices for licensing with a new maintenance subscription program that provides upgrades and support for one year, and includes two extensions. CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2017 is $999 or $429 upgrade for the permanent license; maintenance is another $198/year. The subscription fee (where you don't pay for the software upfront) is $360/year. Corel has a new numbering system, where version 2017 follows version X7. They are updating the software every year now, instead every two years, as Corel has an annual subscription program now. The software shipped July 7. http://www.coreldraw.com/en/product/technical-suite   And Now the Rest of the News... Rakesh Rao is director of DesignSense Software Technologies in Bangalore, India. I've gotten to know him and his firm's software offerings at the annual Bricsys conference. On his blog Smarter .dwg CAD  he wrote recently on "BricsCAD for non-Windows OSes: Where does it stand today?" at http://rakeshrao.typepad.com/work_smarter_geotools/2017/06/bricscad-for-non-windows-users-where-does-it-stand-today.html While major CAD vendors do what they can to protect your IP when it is on their servers, there is the problem of how to keep protecting your drawings once they are sent to contractor, manufacturers, and so on. Vera says they have a cloud security solution for users of PTC and Autodesk software "to secure, track and share any kind of data, no matter where it's stored or located." https://www.vera.com/industries/manufacturing/ Letters to the Editor Re: The Hardware Hacker I am in a slightly similar situation as Chis: I would love for the things we design to somehow be identifiable in the future.  Most schemes seem easily defeated by simply exporting the model in a different format.  You could slap a sketch of your logo on the part and cut that into it, but that's defeatable just by deleting it. My thinking is running in this direction:  make some feature on the model uniquely identifiable, but only to those who know what to look for. We could leverage the CAD system's OCD-ness [obsessive compulsive disorder] over dimensions: instead of making the holes in the plate 0.750 inches, make them .75000055.   Nobody ever looks on our type of machinery at any dimension of that many decimal places out, and no laser or plasma cutter has the accuracy for that to be a problem.  When it comes to a courtroom battle, you would demonstrate the models originated in your shop by their uniqueness.  Working in both metric and English dimensions on different projects makes me think that cooking up some bizarre habit like designing the edges of parts (we work in mostly laser-cut plate) in millimeters, and the hole placement in fractional inches, would be uniquely identifiable, but my co-workers might well kill me over it. I suppose we could write a macro that would apply that to every dimension, or some particular dimension, automatically.  The weakness of it is that it relies on secrecy, so if the company "borrowing" your models knows about it, then they could have another equally simple macro that truncates all dimensions at four places or something like that.  But somewhere in that basic idea might be a solution: making some feature of the model identifiable in court. Maybe a solution is to just develop a style of modeling that is unique and identifiable.  Back when we time checking prints, we learned to identify draftsmen just by the quirks in their dimension placement and the way they worded their notes -- and sometimes by the words they habitually misspelled.     - Jess Davis, president     Davis Precision Design, Inc. - - - I agree with your comments about different attitudes towards intellectual property. When I was teaching engineering, I would catch the occasional cheater. When confronted, their attitude was almost always, "You asked for a lab report/AutoLisp program/AutoCAD drawing and I submitted one. What's the problem?"  They honestly thought they had done nothing wrong. The extreme case was two students who submitted the identical lab report. The problem was it was last year's report and I had changed the lab a bit. Their response? "Can we get part marks for the portion that was correct?"     - Bill Fane The editor replies: 'When I was a teaching assistant at University of British Columbia and taught at BC Institute of Technology, it seemed that students who cheated had the idea that the prime directive was to pass the course, not learn the material.   Re: Internet Access in Japan On my two last trips to Tokyo, I rented a pocket LTE WiFi router from Ninja Wifi for about $10 a day. It connects up to ten devices and the performance was outstanding as it has high speed and unlimited data. We could, for example, use it for demos of ARES Kudo and even edit DWG drawings in the cloud as fast as if we were at the office. With four to eight meetings a day, we saved time as we did not have to ask and rely on a guest Internet account when visiting customers. The advantage of a pocket-size router is that it has a stronger antenna than the one found in smartphones. It is both a better LTE receiver and a better router. I noticed than many carriers offering international Internet coverage tend to reduce the speed, so not LTE [4G] but 3G.     - Cedric Desbordes, sales and marketing executive     Graebert Gmbh, Germany The editor replies: "I had seen these booths at the airport. While we had WiFi most of the time in Kyoto, it failed during the worst possible time: during the first morning of the conference, hence I was unable to live-blog the keynote." - - - OMG!!!! Couldn’t let this one go by without a response: “Let's face it: most of the important innovations of the recent past have not even originated in companies but are the result of government spending.” To what country is he referring?      - Peter Lawton The editor replies: I was wondering if someone would catch that. He lives in the EU, the source of all that is Good. #charliegard   Re: Trimble and Sketchup I started on SketchUp 5, kept it while using 7, because 5 could import AutoCAD, 7 couldn't. I use SketchUp to access terrains with high detail and GPS locations with accurate scaling. I have the modeling aspects and the rendering down. I mastered all the functions of SketchUp and Vray some time ago, and find that it's better than 3ds Max, because it accomplishes the same thing for a skilled modeler. The smoothing of SketchUp is better than 3ds Max, simpler, cheaper, more better!  SketchUp 2014 was great until Trimble decided to slash its user base to make profit, which I predict will dry up and blow away over its disloyalty. Trimble could maybe survive its treachery if it drops the price of its Pro version. That would position it to knock out 3DS. A lot of us created a sharing concept that Trimble doesn't give a care about.      - Ladd Building via WorldCAD Access   Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Stanley Przybylinski: "Happy to do my little part, Ralph." Walter Black of AV Symbols Ross Goulter (Australia) Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $625 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/625 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.comand the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "The best thing about Big Data is you don't have to know what it is to make a living as an expert thought-leader in it."     - David Burge, @iowahawkblog on Twitter

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