How to use CorelDraw Tips and Tricks Page 9 Draw Perfect Shapes in Corel Draw
Draw Ellipses and Rectangles the smart way

Drawing Ellipses and Circles in your drawings

Using the ellipse tool you can draw perfect circles, ellipses to your size and manipulate circles to new shapes with the node edit tools.

Once you have a circle or ellipse drawn, convert to curves, then using your node edit tool, break apart the nodes, select the entire node values and split the nodes. Then you can control and move your circle or elipse to become part of a line or weld to another object such as a rectangle without losing any clarity of your remaining shape (curve).

Perfect Circles

Hold the CTRL key as you draw using your Ellipse Tool. The result will be a perfect circle.

Perfect Circles from your mouse point (from the inside)

Hold SHIFT-CTRL key as you draw, this will be perfect circle from the inside.

Perfect Squares

Hold the CTRL key as you draw using your Rectangle Tool. This will also create a perfect square.
TIP: Look at your top measurement selector in the top title tool bar, Practice achieving a referenced number when drawing. This habit will assist your drawing to life size or bigger image and is a trade secret signwriters have been using for a long time, the more you draw with a specific measurement in mind, the clearer the image and importantly, the better you become. This principle can be applied to lots of other medium, such as carpentry, sculpture models, building design..

Perfect Squares from the inside.

Hold the SHIFT-CTRL when drawing with your Rectangle Tool.

How to draw perfect shapes in Corel Draw, Illustrator or other program.

TIP: Use guidelines, use guidelines..... use guidelines.

All signage and laser cutting, screenprinting and other sign related products are best suited to drawing using guidelines.

When drawing circles or squares, rectangles or other shapes, try to keep your images to common sizes.

Tools you should learn to use often.

The Pick tool lets you select and size, skew, and rotate objects.
The Shape tool lets you edit the shape of objects.
The Freehand tool lets you draw single line segments and curves.
The Bezier tool lets you draw curves one segment at a time.
The Dimension tool lets you draw vertical, horizontal, slanted, or angular dimension lines.
The Rectangle tool lets you draw rectangles and squares.
The Ellipse tool lets you draw ellipses and circles.
The Text tool lets you type words directly on the screen as artistic or paragraph text.
The Fill tool lets you set the fill properties.
The Outline tool lets you set the outline properties.
The Contour Outline Tool lets you create key lines in vector formats. This is the most useful tool in CorelDraw for making 'scalable' logos, fonts and drawings with a Key Line. Learn to use this tool, it is very handy and will allow you 'scalable' drawings and files.
The Page Up Page Down Buttons on your Keyboard. Select your object, then use the Page up or Page down buttons, this will make the object layer above or below the other items on your screen. In this manner you can draw without requiring individual layers as used in Photoshop etc. You can also use Ctrl/Page Up, Ctrl Page Down, to move above or below one item at a time. Very handy.

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