What would make you upgrade?

[Earl Smith]

Alan, I upgraded to X4 for two reasons. First was that my program was part of and even larger Embroidery program and it came at a reasonable price for the upgrade. The second was the Trace function which is now directly within the Draw program.
I have a small garment decorating shop on a busy main road. Many customers come in and only have a jpeg with them. With X4 I can very quickly show customers their designs as a vector, change colours, resize and do all the necessary things in a short time while the customer is with me. They dont have to come back and it makes me look professional.
Also the advantage with the embroidery program is that it will convert vector to embroidery datai while the customer is there . Not previously possible. Looks good and many times I can persuade the customer to buy embroidery instead of vinyl print.
What extras?? It would be nice if it was possible to select one colour and then ask Draw to select all the same colours. Also to be able to Stack letters one on top of the other.
My 2p worth.
Earl.

[David Rowland]

Are you doing a wish list Alan?

Only experience is with X3 so far
Saving with large files, perhaps X4 is better as it is a different format. It takes a while to "process" so code optimization in saving and loading.

Improvements of using 3rd Party Palletes for Spot Colours, (like your own Pantone, your own Avery, your own RAL etc.)

I don’t know if it is possible, but you can edit with LaB values within corel, but when you output EPS (or PDF) they get converted to RGB or CMYK. Nice to keep them "Native" and have an option to "Convert LaB ot CYMK." I actually don’t know if Postscript supports LaB as it is at RIP level colour tuning.

When a file is in use be someone else, it tells you who it is (or machine name). Or it could send notification to user.

That will do for now

[Alan Drury]

You can select all the same colours already using ‘find and replace’ find objects. If if you need to find the objects to change colour, there is an excellent macro which does this by selecting a colour with an eyedropper. Not sure if its free (probably) but if not very cheap as in less than $10, a bit better than the built in method.
Alan D

[Ian Muir]

Interesting question Alan.

For me….

Presently I work in Corel and export for cutting to Signlab (don’t use signlab except for this purpose).
I do this because, although I know you cancut direct from Corel (or use an add on) it is a fiddely process compared to Signlab, i.e. in Corel you have to position your vector exactly on the page and as said above, cut by colour is more complicated to do in Corel.

So No. 1 – Easy cutting facility like in Signlab.

No.2 – With Adobew playing games by trying to code it’s macros and plug ins there are less of these available to use in Corel, so be nice if Adobe and Corel got talking ice again.

No.3 – Along same lines, likes of CS3 and CS4 files, pdfs etc I cannot open in my Corel 12 so I need at some point to upgrade to enable me to easy work with customer sent files….

Ian :lol1:

[Alan Drury]

Hi Ian.
1. My gut feeling is that Corel won’t add a cutting facility as there good ones supplied by the major plotter manufacturers as well as the likes of CoCut and Signtools.
2. I suspect Corel’s liaison with Adobe depends on Adobe’s licence fees as much as coding.
3. X3 and X4 are significantly better at importing pdfs than V12

Alan D

[David Rowland]

I just need macro ideas, i got a bunch of them.
Must start looking into Illustrator and coding, not done that as of yet.

[Graeme Harrold]

Ill be upgrading in the near future to X4 from 12, but in future versions Id like to see the abaility to select and deselect fonts within Corel, bit like I can do in Engravelab.

Better Ai export as I use this quite a bit for engraving, but end up with multiple lines overlayed that cause multiple passes on the cutter.

Bring some more of the shortcut keys in line with Windows norm e.g. spell check "F7" instead of "Ctrl +F12"

[Alan Drury]

Graeme, Font Navigator – comes with Draw suite, you can install and remove fonts with that and in later versions of Draw you don’t need to restart Draw.
In X4 the AI filter was improved and supports later versions of Illy. There is also a free macro at http://www.oberonplace.com that allows cut and paste between Draw and Illy.
Short cut keys can be altered in Draw to F7 or you can put an icon on your toolbar.
Alan D

[Byron Villegas]

What I want is for Corel draw to have more drawing tools (more simplier than the Bezier tool). There’s this "quickdraw" tool in our embroidery digitizing software where you just left click on the mouse for straight lines and right click for curve lines. I find that it’s easier to trace logos and drawings when using this tool as compared to the Bezier tool.

[Shane Drew]

Interesting Thread.

My biggest issue with upgrading is the cost.

I’ll be staying with X3 until I see some bargains with X4.

X3 is eons ahead than 12 or 10 tho.

I’d like to see some more plugins for Corel though, and easier photo manipulation within corel rather than switching between two programs all the time… not that it is a real complaint because the switching is pretty seamless.

I’ve just purchased CS4 because more of my clients are supplying cs4 files that don’t read properly in pdf format thru X3, and its so different to X3. Its a nightmare to get your head around, but although it doesn’t have as many features as adobe, X3 is quicker to get to know than CS4, and of course its much cheaper.

[Alan Drury]

Byron, I know what you mean, Signlab has similar node editing to the way you describe and I tend to use Sl for this kind of work.
I know what you mean as well Shane regarding import, every version gets updated filters but it is always catchup with Adobe as the goal posts get moved each time a new version appears.
I’ve never thought of the upgrade as being expensive though – normally about £155 – £175 from the likes of Amazon. For a tool you would use daily for about 2 years and was tax deductable I would have thought it was fair investment especially when you compare to the Adobe offerings.
Alan D

[David Rowland]

easier ways to buy the networked editions… maybe "Corel Draw Small Business Edition", with the focus on running the program on a network of computer that share fonts, allow colaboration between corel draw designers, version control and a indexer of corel files. (again only experience is x3)

[Shane Drew]

quote Alan Drury:

I’ve never thought of the upgrade as being expensive though – normally about £155 – £175 from the likes of Amazon. For a tool you would use daily for about 2 years and was tax deductable I would have thought it was fair investment especially when you compare to the Adobe offerings.
Alan D

Its recently been reduced to $400 here Alan (the upgrade). When X3 is working for me, to find the extra few hundreds to upgrade is a lot to ask.

If you go to a sign show and buy on the day, its closer to $300, but it is still expensive in my book.

I went from v10 to 12 then X3. I’ll probably leave it till X5 I guess. I got X3 cheaper because X4 was on the horizon, and Corel here didn’t want to get caught with old software I’d assume.

The new X4 version is $830, but if you shop on fleabay you may get it as low as $650.00

[Stephen Morriss]

I’d like to see the DXF export filter working better, Corel make a real mess of them at the moment with curves becoming lines.
At the moment I import the corel file into signlabs then use the signlabs dxf export.
Some way to "heal" fonts that create problems with shadows, even some of the common fonts have a bad node some were and the shadow tool just gives up and leaves a gap you have to fill in by hand.

I’m also using X3 at the moment and have no intention of upgrading just yet.
Must admit i got it at a very good price and then corel gave a cash back as well, ended up costing me just over £100 in the end so I’m very happy with it.

Steve

[David Rowland]

ah good point… also in X3 they dropped compatibility with very old versions of DXF/CAD, which made it incompatible with our router software.

So re-do the CAD Export would be fantastic

[Neil Speirs]

Sorry quick high jack here 🙄

quote Earl Smith:

Also the advantage with the embroidery program is that it will convert vector to embroidery datai while the customer is there.

what u using earl? Decostudio?

[Earl Smith]

I´m using Embroidery studio. Level one standard. Does everything for me and very very quickly. As is normal with auto digitising you have to make a few changes. But it does the job very well. Expensive though.
Earl

[Alan Drury]

Keep ’em coming guys.
Stephen, I’ve not seen the font issue you describe, have you examples?
Alan D

[Stephen Morriss]

Hi Alan

I’ll have to do one and post it for you, it’s down to the font having a dodgy node so the curve or line will have a tiny nick in it due to the node pointing inwards, you have to zoom in to see it.
It’s a font problem, not CorelDraw ( I think) would just be nice to be able to sort it out with a click of a button :lol1:

Me lazy?

Steve

[David Rowland]

Just thinking, I hear X4 still hasn’t got Multiprocessing.

Processor Optimisations is possibly the biggest thing that I would request, to make Corel go much faster. Adobe introduced this as soon as the processors came out, so Corel needs to catch up.

So Quad core users dont see 25% cpu usage, Dual Core 50% usage, true spreading of work between processors.

[Hugh Potter]

quote Dave Rowland:

Just thinking, I hear X4 still hasn’t got Multiprocessing.

Processor Optimisations is possibly the biggest thing that I would request, to make Corel go much faster. Adobe introduced this as soon as the processors came out, so Corel needs to catch up.

So Quad core users dont see 25% cpu usage, Dual Core 50% usage, true spreading of work between processors.

that’s a good idea,

that said, i still use v12 and since getting a quad core pc is it 50x quicker (maybe) when welding complex large objects etc, rarely slows down now!