CorelDRAW X7 fountain fill problem

[Bobby H]

For the past couple or so years I've been using CorelDRAW X5 and X6 between home and work. I recently installed a trial version of CorelDRAW X7 on my notebook at home, just after doing a factory reset to clear out some garbage that occurred from a recent series of "not ready for prime time" Windows patches.

Anyway, I'm finding more things I don't like about CorelDRAW X7 than things that rank in the positive. Version X6 will ask you to update text when reading in an older version CDR file. Version X7 won't leave you alone about the update text nonsense until you do it. This evening I found another even more annoying thing. Version X7 apparently has no clue how to correctly save down to an earlier version of CorelDRAW and keep fountain fills properly generated. If I save down to version X5 or X3 the file reads back in with the fountain fill changed dramatically. The differences are most apparent on radial fills. This is just as bad as opening Corel-generated fills in Adobe Illustrator or vice versa. I can understand the differences with Illustrator, but when it's happening between the current version of Corel and a recent version (even X6) it's very unacceptable.

Is there any settings I might be missing in CorelDRAW X7 to make it behave properly when saving files down to earlier versions, be it X6, X5 or X3?

 

[Bobby H]

No responses so far?

Another hugely annoying thing: various commands in the X7 user interface have been re-arranged and some very standard items have been deleted from tool bars and menus. What are the folks at Corel thinking? Are they trying to sort of copy the tool and command layout from Adobe Illustrator? Or are they just changing things just for the sake of change?

Here's one gripe: where is the freaking color flyout on the standard tool bar? You could go deep into uniform fill, outline color, fountain fill and a couple other things on this very essential tool bar fly-out. It's gone in X7! It's replaced by other junk I don't use nearly as much like a transparency tool, interactive fill tool, smart fill tool. Um, how about the freaking fundamental color flyout where far more controls over fill and stroke are available!!!???

I'm wondering if the engineers and marketing people putting together this application even bother to try using it.

BTW, even though I use Adobe Illustrator as well, I'll be the first to say Illustrator has a LOT of room for improvement too.

 

[Craig Sjoquist]

Go to CorelDraw forms & more then likely someone that knows a great deal about X7 will chime in & help splve this simple problem.

 

[Bobby H]

I see some of the same questions asked there, with hardly any real answers.

When saving artwork in CorelDRAW X7 down to an earlier version (even when the artwork opened was created in an earlier version of CorelDRAW) you'll see a dialog box giving you choices to preserve appearance or keep the artwork editable. That sounds simple, but unfortunately it doesn't work the same way it does in version X6. So it leads to some confusion and tension over what will be changed in your artwork.

If I choose to keep the artwork editable any fountain fills effects and sometimes even the uniform fills on other objects get changed dramatically. If I choose to maintain the appearance the fountain fill effects still look proper (for the most part). The maintain appearance choice will usually keep type editable. In version X6 saving down while maintaining appearance would cause the type in the layout to be converted to curves.

After a lot of digging I was able to find a pen tool flyout for the tool bar. I suppose Corel's marketing people chose to hide it and the fill tool flyout on the tool bar so they could make room for some of those other things.

I'm finding some bugs in this evaluation version of X7 (which hopefully have been fixed in the update patches). I like to drag and drop layouts into the CorelDRAW window, but that doesn't work very well with the heavy emphasis of tabbed documents in X7. I dragged an open layout off that tabbed interface and then minimized it. It disappeared completely in the window, rather than be a small, select-able item in the lower left corner of the window. The document wouldn't come back when selecting it from the Window menu. It just stayed gone. I had to close the application and re-launch it to work on the document again.

 

[SignManiac]

I quit upgrading at X6 and that was only for the 64bit upgrade. Unless newer versions can print acceptable counterfeit money, it's all I need to design a sign.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Which workspace configuration are you running?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

I truly like X7 over X3 - X6. It seems a lot faster, stable, and some of the new features have been a time saver!

I was loving life until the last hotfix 3, since that point I can't open any options menus. I guess I will have to revert back to the base install and find the hotfix 2 available for download.

 

[Bobby H]

Which workspace configuration are you running?

I'm running the standard default workspace present upon installing X7. As with past versions of CorelDRAW I have to add some additional commands to the tool bars, like one-shot zoom, toggle enhanced & wireframe views, etc.

I was loving life until the last hotfix 3, since that point I can't open any options menus. I guess I will have to revert back to the base install and find the hotfix 2 available for download.

That's good to know. I wonder if Corel's engineers even know about this problem.


I was disappointed to find the node alignment bug I found in X6 is still present in X7. I can't get nodes (or anchor points) to align in a controlled fashion where the last point shift-clicked will stay put and others will align to it. Now the points align to whatever point was drawn first when the object was created. It doesn't matter which point is shift-clicked first or last. This is an extremely annoying problem for technical drawing and object editing/creation. Unfortunately the bug apparently doesn't affect every CorelDRAW installation, but has been affecting EVERY one I've been using or maintaining on 3 different machines. I've seen responses here and in Corel's forums along the lines of "it's working fine on my computer." I guess that has given Corel's engineers reason enough to flat out ignore the node alignment bug.


Meanwhile Adobe's march to outright monopolistic dominance is going unchecked. Lately their Premiere Pro application, which used to be laughed at years ago, is quietly shoving both Avid and Apple Final Cut Pro aside and taking over. I wouldn't have imagined that happening even a year or two ago. It's shades of how InDesign slowly but surely laid waste to Quark Xpress.


Corel really needs to bring their A-game already.