● Copy Page(s) To copy pages—and their contents—hold CTRL while click-dragging the page to a specific location. During dragging, a vertical I-beam appears, indicating the insertion point for the page copy or the first page of the selected sequence of pages. ● Name or Rename Page To add a new name or change an existing page name, click the page name below the page to select it; click a second time to highlight the page title and enter a new name; then press ENTER. You can also rename a page by right-clicking a specific page and choosing Rename Page from the pop-up menu to highlight the page name for editing. ● Change Page Size/Orientation of All Pages In Page Sorter view, the property bar displays typical page property options for applying standard or custom page sizes and for changing the orientation between Landscape and Portrait. If you want to change the orientation of all of the pages in the document, click the All Pages button on the property bar, and then click either the Portrait or the Landscape button to change all pages to that orientation. ● Change Page Size/Orientation of Selected Pages If you want to change only the orientation of some of the pages, click the Current Page button. Then select the pages you want to change, and click the Portrait or Landscape button to change the page(s) to the desired orientation, as shown. Ill 6-20 Changing the orientation in the Page Sorter not only changes the view, but also changes how the pages themselves are oriented in the document. As you can see, the second and last pages have drawings that look better in Portrait view; you CTRL-click pages 2 and 4 in this example, click Current Page, and both the Page Sorter view and the pages themselves are re- oriented. If you want to rethink this dynamic change, repeatedly pressing CTRL+Z (Edit | Undo) restores your document. 164 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Portrait Landscape All Pages Current Page Exiting Page Sorter view is easily done; click the Page Sorter View button, or click any tool on the toolbox. Any changes applied while in the Page Sorter are applied to your document. To exit the Page Sorter and immediately go to a particular page in your document, double-click the page. Page definition, sorting pages, margins, bleeds, and enough other options have been discussed to fill a book! Now that you know how to set up a page, how large do you want that drawing you just created on the page? And how do you precisely move the drawing if you want it perfectly centered on the page? Fortunately, the answers are in the next chapter, which covers measuring and drawing helpers. CHAPTER 6: Working with Single- and Multi-Page Documents 165 6 This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 7 Measuring and Drawing Helpers 167 M ore than likely, a project you are beginning is composed to a specific page size. Within the design you’ve envisioned, you have graphics that need to be aligned, spaced, and proportioned to exact dimensions. Moreover, you might need to label what you’ve designed, adding callouts and even the dimensions of parts of a sketch so manufacturing can order the right size of packaging. Today is your lucky day: CorelDRAW not only has more ways of measuring objects than you can shake a stick at, but it also makes it easy for users of all skill levels to turn out professional, tightly composed pieces. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to measure, scale measurements, align objects, work with guidelines, create your own guidelines, add measurements and callouts, and get objects to snap to other objects with pinpoint precision. Leave “a smidgeon,” “a pinch,” and “just a touch to the left” behind as you enter the world of CorelDRAW accuracy and layout perfection. Using the Ruler Although property bars and toolbars offer information about the size and position of an object (to three decimal places), something about using rulers bounding a page has tangible and easy to understand qualities. Additionally, CorelDRAW rulers are a resource for pulling nonprinting guidelines. Later in this chapter the Dimension and Connector tools, guides, and guidelines are covered. Now let’s look at how rulers are configured and manipulated, and how they invaluably assist in your design work. Accessing Rulers and Ruler Properties Straight out of the box, CorelDRAW displays rulers on the top and left side of the page window. However, if someone experimented with your installed copy and turned rulers off, it’s easy to restore their visibility. You can choose View | Rulers from the main menu, but a quicker way is via the pop-up menu. With any tool chosen except the Zoom tool, right-click over a blank area of the page (or outside of the page), and then choose View | Rulers from the pop-up menu. Ill 7-1 168 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Pop-up menu Rulers in CorelDRAW look like physical rulers with major spacing (inches, for example) and minor spacing (the ticks between whole number amounts, such as 3/8 and 1/4). CorelDRAW detects when a mouse scroll wheel is active, and if you zoom the page in and out, you’ll see an additional ruler nicety—the ruler ticks between major spacing have labels for fractional amounts when your zoom level is large enough to display them. CorelDRAW rulers (see Figure 7-1) can be broken down into three components: the vertical ruler, the horizontal ruler, and the ruler origin. If you ever need the location of your cursor onscreen, you’ll see a dotted line on the rulers, and the numerical value is right at hand on the status bar. CorelDRAW uses the standard convention of displaying horizontal position values as X values on the property bar, and vertical values as Y. For example, you create a rectangle using the Rectangle tool, and you’re not sure you put the rectangle in the center of an 8½×11" page. A quick glance at the property bar will tell you that if the rectangle’s X position is 4.25" and the Y position is 5.5", its center is at the center of the page. The origin is the intersection of the vertical and horizontal rulers at the top left of the workspace. The origin is the page position reference where all measurements begin, but it does not represent the zero point for measuring the page. By default, the lower-left corner of your page represents the ruler origin 0 position. Try this: Create a shape near the center of the page. Then with the Pick tool move the shape up and to the right, while watching the X, Y position values on the property bar; the values increase. Conversely, if you move the shape down and to the left, the values decrease—eventually, if you move the shape off the page (down and left), you’ll see negative X, Y values on the property bar, as the shape travels beyond the origin. CHAPTER 7: Measuring and Drawing Helpers 169 7 FIGURE 7-1 Elements of CorelDRAW’s rulers Ruler origin Vertical ruler (Y value) Cursor position indicators Cursor Page border Horizontal ruler (X value) As with a physical ruler, you can move rulers in CorelDRAW to assist you in your design needs. Additionally, you can leave the rulers where they are and just move the origin of the rulers. This is something that cannot be done with a physical ruler; working with these features is covered in the sections to follow. Setting the Ruler Origin Say you’re uncomfortable with measuring from the bottom left and prefer a more conventional set of rulers that start at the upper-left corner of a page. Click-hold your cursor on the origin, and then drag to a point at the upper-left corner of the page. Doing this thwarts the ability to use the property bar for easy-to-read X, Y positions for objects, because by convention—in drawing applications, CAD applications, and most advanced design programs—Y, the vertical measurement of space, always travels up in a positive direction. However, moving the origin not only can make the rulers suit your intuitions, but it’s also a handy technique for measuring relative distance between objects, measured against each other and not as an absolute measurement against the page. Two Inches to the Right, Please 1. Create two shapes; any shapes will do. 2. Move the shapes using the Pick tool so that they’re horizontally aligned, and let’s try 5 inches from each other. 3. You need the centers of the objects to be 2 inches apart. You click-drag the origin so that it’s horizontally centered on the first object. The zero horizontal point is now at the center of the first object. 4. You move the second object so that its center is at the 2-inch major mark on the horizontal ruler. 5. With this shape still selected, take a look at the X, Y fields on the property bar. If the X value is not exactly 2.000, type 2.000 in the X field, and then press ENTER. See Figure 7-2. It’s easy to undo what you’ve done: to restore the origin of the rulers to the default setting, double-click the origin. A more dramatic change you can make to the rulers is to actually reposition them in the workspace, not simply change where the units appear. To undock the rulers (they come as a set; you cannot undock only one ruler), hold SHIFT and then drag the ruler origin to where you want the rulers to begin. You’ll see a dashed-line preview onscreen for the intended new location of the rulers; release the mouse button, and the rulers move to this position. To restore the rulers (to dock them), you hold SHIFT and then double-click the ruler origin. See Figure 7-3. 170 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide CHAPTER 7: Measuring and Drawing Helpers 171 7 FIGURE 7-2 Specify a different origin for the rulers to measure relative distances between the centers of objects. 3 5 FIGURE 7-3 Rulers can be repositioned on the page. SHIFT+click-drag the ruler origin to undock and move. Hold SHIFT and double-click to redock. Once the rulers are undocked, you’re free to move them as needed, by holding SHIFT while dragging the origin. Regardless of where you place the rulers in the workspace, the zero for the increments on the rulers remains constant. To see this, move the view of the page by using the scroll bars at the right and bottom of the screen, or use the Hand tool ( H); the increments on the undocked rulers move as you move your view. If you need to move the origin while the rulers are undocked, drag the origin. Setting Unit Measure In CorelDRAW, you have the same unit measurements as in the real world: millimeters, yards, and so on. Units of measure is the name of the setting in CorelDRAW, and they affect the look of the rulers as they increase and decrease in frequency with your view magnification setting. The actual units of measure are specified according to the drawing units currently defined on the property bar. To set the drawing unit measure, choose the Pick tool (click an empty area on your page to make sure nothing is selected), and then use the Units drop-down list on the property bar to specify anything from picas to kilometers. Drawing units control the units displayed on rulers and also for other areas of CorelDRAW X5 where dimensions are displayed: page size, shape size, and nudge and duplicate offset commands. Ill 7-2 Setting Ruler Options Options for measuring in CorelDRAW can be found in Tools | Options | Document | Rulers; but the faster route is to double-click a page ruler, or to right-click a ruler and then choose Ruler Setup from the pop-up menu . In the Rulers area of the Options box, you’ll find options in addition to the increments displayed on rulers. See Figure 7-4. Nudging At the top of the Rulers page are Nudge options, worth covering first here, although indirectly related to the page rulers themselves. When we nudge things in the real world, our intention 172 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Drawing units is to move an object by a small, but fairly arbitrary distance—and we estimate the measurement. In CorelDRAW, however, nudging objects is precise, not at all arbitrary, and on the Rulers page you can set the distance for normal, Super, and Micro nudging. Nudging can be performed on a shape, several shapes at the same time, and even on a node or several nodes on a path when they are selected using the Shape tool. Once you’ve specified values for nudging in the Rulers area: ● You set the normal nudge distance of an object by choosing the object(s) with the Pick tool or by choosing the node(s) using the Shape tool, and then pressing the keyboard arrow keys to nudge up, down, or across; one keyboard stroke equals one nudge distance. ● Super-nudging is performed the same way as normal nudging, except you hold the SHIFT key while pressing any arrow key. ● Micro-nudging is performed the same way as regular nudging, except you hold the CTRL key while pressing any arrow key. CHAPTER 7: Measuring and Drawing Helpers 173 7 FIGURE 7-4 The Rulers area of Options is where you can set units, the independent display of units on rulers, nudge distance, and more. . and the Y position is 5.5", its center is at the center of the page. The origin is the intersection of the vertical and horizontal rulers at the top left of the workspace. The origin is the. area of the page (or outside of the page), and then choose View | Rulers from the pop-up menu. Ill 7-1 168 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Pop-up menu Rulers in CorelDRAW look like physical rulers. move to this position. To restore the rulers (to dock them), you hold SHIFT and then double-click the ruler origin. See Figure 7-3. 170 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide CHAPTER 7: Measuring and Drawing