Question concerning extruded objects

I was working (practice) on a graphic in DRAW 11 for the Mac and had created a 9-point star and extruded it. The fill was multi-colored and graduated. I then created a graduated fill sky in the background and tried to put the extruded object to the front to make it appear as a sun, but it would always go to the back and ALL of my file menu options would gray-out, leaving me w/ no other options whatsoever. What could cause CD to drop my options like this? I have re-installed from the CD a few weeks ago. Could this be a sign from CD that I have gone beyond my OS compatability for the program, as what happened when I upgraded my OS in the Mac in version 6 and didnt upgrade my CD software or can this just be a version 11 problem? I would attach the file I was working on but the file crashed and I did not want to spend time re-creating what was lost.

Also, recently I have lost a graphic that I was workin on that was a drawing over a photo that I was tracing some of the components by hand. Are these signs that its time to let go and move on?

Chuck

It most likely is a memory question. CorelDRAW needs more memory assigned than most programs. Like Photoshop, requires the setup of a scratch disk, without you choosing one, it has the default which it chooses, which may or may not have enough there to support the program. Additionally you may assign RAM by percentages. Beyond that CorelDRAW 11, from what I've read, has an extraordinary amount of undos, which can interfere with memory. Best to cut this number to a reasonable amount such as 25 or under. I do use CorelDRAW X3 on the MAC, but it is in Parallels 3.0 running under Windows on a MAC Pro with 4 gigs of RAM. I did have to tell Parallels to not run synchronized time like 60 seconds, its default, made it 3600 now and there is no slow down in performance. The use of the mouse is different, and Parallels will run a tablet with sensitivity only after unplugging and replugging, then it will work with the Windows driver in my case, other wise the tablet runs in mouse-mode only. There are numberous upgrades since CD11 which you do not have. Trace is far more powerful, there are some new tools such as roughen and smear, a crop tool, fillets and rounds, bevel, spot color support for everything including with transparency. In nearly everything you can export to .pdf, the spot color separations work except in crossing transparency with spot color and duotones, or over a gradient with spot color. So it is very good. Currently since the release of Adobe Acrobat 8.0, these .pdfs made with 8.0 do not import, but you can import and edit .pdfs with DRAW X3 and that is very very handy. If you have Acrobat Professional and find the fonts are not importing to DRAW, you can print from Acrobat, another .pdf where you can actually change the fonts to outlines, as embedding MAC fonts will not help unless they are Open fonts for the PC. This outlining fonts in .pdf requires you print even landscape files as portrait and enter your height and width as custom page sizes. Then the import to DRAW works perfectly and you do not have to worry about a customer's design or fonts changing. Nine times out of ten this works, but the stacking order can vary. I had one file I did an impotition in where the stacking order changed. So you have to be careful still. I still would rather do an imposition in CorelDRAW as it takes so little time, just being able to center anything which is grouped on a page by hitting "P" is so handy. Illustrator does not have an equivalent. I have not used CD11 myself. The situation you ran into sounds like a bug that is inherent in that version. Other complaints I have heard is that OS X will not run CD11 without a print driver installed. DRAW also can suffer if you do not use a font manager and have loads and loads of fonts installed which all eat up memory. DRAW has Bitstream Font Navigator but any font manager for MAC should give DRAW the same benefit as I do not know how the Font Manger DRAW has works with the MAC OS.

There are times when working with extrusions, it is best to work in wireframe view, that way you do no have to stress the resources of the computer to render each and every move.

In your file, if you put your sky on a layer underneath the sun, that may work, or render the sky as a bitmap. Again, I'd just have the extrusion on a layer by itself.

I suppose your backup files are corrupt as well?

Sally, thanks for the reply and the suggestions. I will check all these things out. I am not used to working with layers or in wire frame. I will have to maybe consult my CorelDRAW WOW! book or my Unleashed video, although it covers X3 which I have for the PC. I just like the way Macs handle things over a PC, sorry maybe just a personal preference. I forgot about assigning more memory to programs if OSX allows this.

I would really like to go the way that you have done and buy a Mac that can run both OS's, but that's not in my budget right now. My eMac is maxed out on the ram. Thanks again.

Chuck

There are also loads of scripts which PC CorelDRAW users use, I do not know if you can use .GMS files though for version 11 for Windows they work.

I should imagine it is just having problems with video drivers. There may be an update for your video driver. It couldn't hurt.

Do you find that running CorelDRAW 11 in comparison to Illustrator on a MAC runs faster and more efficiently? I have certainly found that to be true on the PC end of things. I had some issues with how to get the speed I was expecting with Parallels for the MAC and sorted that out. I run DRAW now just as fast as Windows does.

BTW, the setting for assigning scratch disk and memory is in DRAW: Tools/Options. Just then look for memory and for scratch disk, it may not be in the same place on my version. Just look through all the tabs and headings. Or use the help of the binoculars to find it, it is going to be there.

How old is your MAC? I know MACs seem to stay in use longer than PCs and are you using OS X Tiger with your MAC? Don't get to talk with as many MAC users so I am curious. Do you like the way CorelDRAW 11 runs on the MAC better than X3 on the PC? I really like using PhotoPaint as well in X3 but there really haven't been that many significant differences over the years in PhotoPaint to the current X3. I'd love to see how CorelDRAW 11 both DRAW and Paint run on MAC. Just for my own knowledge-sake. No problem on your personal preference. I was a short while back asking Foster Coburn what was a better option, using CorelDRAW 11 natively or going with Parallels or BootCamp. His suggestion is to stay with X3 and use Parallels. It is interesting to hear another users point of view. Can you explain for our readers if you have time what is different and what makes it better? I had gone into a lenghty discussion elsewhere on this forum on the quality issue which really drove my MAC purchase more than anything.

Additional information you may enjoy; corel.com has opened a company sponsored forum at coreldraw.com. You can ask an administrator if you can have your own gallery and blog. For me, I guess corel.com is aware of me already as I was offered my own gallery and blog. I just wrote my first blog over there which is my experience thus far using CorelDRAW X3 on a MAC under Parallels Desktop. It is a much much much larger CorelDRAW forum than this one. Not that I am by any means trying to shoo you away. But you may also find help when I run out of ideas there too.

Good luck.