Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 - Workflow overview

Products

Graphics CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 Wilcom DecoStudio e1 more » Technical Illustration Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 Corel DESIGNER Professional 12 Painting/Natural Media Corel Painter X Corel Painter Essentials 4

Video & DVD

DVD & Video Playback Corel WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray Corel WinDVD 9 Plus more » Video Editing Ulead VideoStudio 11 Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 Plus more » DVD Creation Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus Copy, Convert & Burn Corel DVD Copy 6 Plus Windows Media Player Add-ons InterVideo DVD XPack InterVideo MP3 XPack more »

Photo & Imaging

Photo Editing Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ulead PhotoImpact 12 more »

Office Suite

Corel WordPerfect Lightning Corel WordPerfect Office X4 - Standard Edition more »

Free Trials Store Community Support About Corel Partners

Products Illustration & Design Graphics Technical Illustration Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 Buy It Try It Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 In detail Register Workflow overview Features and benefits Case Studies Upgrade eligibility In the box System requirements More info Corel DESIGNER Professional 12 Painting/Natural Media Video & DVD Photo & Imaging Office Suite

Geared for the technical illustrator's workflow

Corel DESIGNER® Technical Suite 12 was conceived with a specific focus on the technical illustrator's needs for design precision, collaboration efficiency and flexibility, and the ability to repurpose old data and drawings.

The creation of technical illustrations can be a complex process, especially when designs are intended to serve multiple departments within an organization. The diagram for a single part may need to be used in product documentation and repurposed for use in marketing materials. In such cases, it is critical that users are able to collaborate with internal and external department resources and work seamlessly with external data in various file formats.

Customizing the workspace

Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 was designed to integrate with the workflow of technical illustrators. It offers a customizable user interface, enabling technical illustrators to streamline the available tools to match their workflow and quickly tailor the interface menus, commands, shortcut keys, and toolbars. For network deployments, Dynamic Language Switching makes it easy to deploy and use the application in any of its supported languages.

Also included is the Workspace Selector which provides the choice of additional workspaces. The Workspace Selector includes preconfigured workspaces that resemble the look and feel of Adobe® Illustrator®, Micrografx Designer® 9, and Microsoft® Visio®. In addition, users can create, save, and share their own custom workspaces. For example, users can create different workspaces that are specific to the review and design processes.

Converting legacy designs

Before the days of CAD and other illustration software, technical illustrators relied on old-fashioned India ink to put their designs on paper. To use many of these older designs today, they must be scanned to create a bitmap image. The bitmaps are then traced to form editable vector images. To save time and effort, Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 includes CorelTRACE 12, a bitmap-to-vector tracing utility. CorelTRACE automatically converts scanned or manually created bitmaps into vector images and seemlessly imports them into Corel DESIGNER.

Minimizing data loss through AutoCAD® compatibility

Today, most technical illustrations start with data created by CAD engineers. Typically, this data details the technical component of a product and can range from legacy designs to new perspective views. Often, a technical illustrator employs multiple applications before finishing a design. The ability to exchange this information between applications without losing data is critical to a technical illustrator's workflow.

Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 perfectly complements AutoCAD® by providing tools and features that support the workflow of technical illustrators. It supports more than 75 file formats, including DXF, DWG, SVG, CGM, CDR, PDF, PSD, TIFF, AI, EPS, DOC, XLS, and more. In addition, Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 lets users import Corel DESIGNER® 9 and Micrografx® DESIGNER files (DSF), including version 3.1 through 9.

Ensuring precision

To a technical illustrator, precision is everything. Whether a design is intended for the aerospace, automotive, apparel, or telecommunications industry, approximation is not an option. All objects must be perfectly aligned with each other. With a hectic workflow, technical illustrators can not afford to waste time by zooming in and out to double-check object positioning.

Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 gives users exceptional tools for ensuring the accuracy of their technical illustrations. Gravity snapping lets users snap the pointer to various points in objects, making it easy to create and position objects accurately. Technical illustrators can now snap the pointer to perpendicular and text baseline points as well.

Dynamic guides are temporary guidelines that illustrators can pull from the following snap points in objects ? center, node, quadrant, and text baseline. Users can also display dynamic guides that are tangent, perpendicular, or parallel to objects. In addition, parallel dynamic guides help users to easily draw parallel lines or objects.

Using the right tools for the job

Technical illustrations also require detailed annotations, callouts and measurements. These items may include information about product part numbers, links to other drawings, and descriptions of functionality. Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 provides enhanced tools for creating and modifying callouts and dimension lines, with simple or advanced options. For example, adding a halo to a callout creates a mask behind the leader line, which makes it easier to see call-outs on top of other objects.

The new projected drawing modes, which use predefined drawing profiles to represent three-dimensional objects in two dimensions, dramatically increase productivity for technical illustrators. Now, users can actively draw on the projected plane, eliminating the need to draw the object first and then project it in a second step. The new enhanced line styles, which allow technical illustrators to create lines of a specific width and pattern, are particularly useful for drawing stitching patterns. They were developed as a direct result of user feedback in the apparel industry. In addition, hatch fills provide an easy method of differentiating between material types, such as flooring.

Frequently, an illustration may be localized in several languages or contain information in multiple languages. To that end, Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 supports Unicode text, which allows users to work with multilingual documents.

Automating repetitive tasks

Many technical illustrators spend countless hours on repetitive tasks, such as hotspotting, changing part numbers, and creating lists of parts. With Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and an array of industry-standard symbols included, Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 streamlines the technical illustration workflow.

VBA lets users automate repetitive tasks and enables easy interaction between data and objects for creating hotspots and parts lists. VBA can also be used to create add-ons and extensions for Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 to suit user's workflow.

To allow easy placement of screws, nuts, bolts, and threading, Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 includes more than 4,000 industry-standard symbols. Users can also create and share their own reusable symbols that can be linked to over a corporate network. The ability to link to the symbols over a network enables dynamic updates, so that when a linked symbol is modified by another illustrator, designs using that symbol can be easily updated to reflect the change.

Exporting your work

Whether technical illustrators are importing a file or exporting a finished design, data loss is not an option. Industry-standard file formats are mandatory to ensure easy deployment and sharing of files. Included in the more than 75 industry-standard import/export filters, Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 supports WebCGM, ActiveCGM, GREX-CGM (ATA), and SVG filters. Users can also import and export to a variety of bitmap formats, including TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, CDR, CPT, and RIF.

Without the need for additional software, users can easily create a PDF of a design, which is viewable using the freely distributed Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® software on any computer. To ensure perfect printing results, Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite 12 also features a color management system and advanced preflight capabilities.