How to Bend a Collection of Objects

As a landscape designer I am frequently faced with designing patterns in walkways & patios with square & rectangular shaped landscape pavers. CorelDraw is terrific for this application when the walkways, patios, etc are straight, square or rectangular. But often I need to go around corners or bends or make an "S" curve.

In fact I don't know how to make a plain walkway that goes around a bend, let alone one with many pavers in it.

I have absolutely no clue as to how to go about it. All help is greatly appreciated. I am using Draw 9.

Attached is an example of a straight walkway (sidewalk) that I would like to bend around a corner.

Great Question!
I would love to know the answer myself.

Good luck!

CorelDRAW had in 9 an envelope tool and it is so well made, it really hasn't changed up till now. It is located on the effects flyout fourth flyout from the bottom. The tool in question is third from the right. This gives you nodes around your object which allow you to distort your drawing as though it were melted wax. If you select two nodes at once, opposite nodes, you can create equal curves on both sides. Additionally, via use of shift, alt and ctrl in various combinations, you can get a balloon effect as well. 9 doesn't appear to allow you to create your own envelope shape. You should access your help menu and read all the documentation on this tool and then have fun.

With CorelDRAW you can also make brushes and create all kinds of items as part of that brush, they are scatter brushes, you do not need to have them bounce items all over the place, but you can get some pretty interesting effects with it. If you wanted an irregular stone paver, this might work out well to indicate an edging. As it could be a brush, you could use it again and again.

Along with the envelope tool however you can create a shape and use it as a mould. Which offers tremendous some versions of DRAW but if 9.0 is like 8.0, you do it from the Effects menu. Click Envelope then the eyedropper button, then the horizontal pointer and select the object you want to use as the envelope shape, then hit apply. There are a couple of modes, vertical, horizontal original and putty. See what works best in your situation.

My suggestion would be to create an artistic media brush from the grouped objects. Create your group so that it is laid out horizontally, like the bottom shape in my posted pic. Then save it as an artistic media brush. Draw your path with the bezier or pen tool, or any of the preset shapes (circle, rectangle, etc), then with your path selected, switch to the artistic media brush and apply it to your path. (You might have to scroll down the list, even if it is already displayed, and click on it again in order to apply it, at least that's how I get it to "stick" to my path in my Draw 11). Note the height of your original group, then use it as the value for the width of the brush stroke. The brush is going to stretch your shape, so you might have to cut your path up to approximately the same length segments as your grouped object. Separate the subpaths to get the proper result. You might also have to play with the path direction in the path edit node so that the start and end patterns match up for the separated paths... Hard to describe, but not that hard to do, really. Here's my result after just a few minutes of playing with it. It took me longer to replicate the pattern in vector than to create the curving walkways. I'm using Draw 11 but I googled and Draw 9 have artistic media brushes. Not sure if there are any radical difference on the functions, though.

This is great stuff Gman. I've attached a .pdf of other distortions you and the forum may benefit from.


I found when I made the brush go around the circular path, the nodes didn't quite match up. By breaking the nodes at only this point, I could adjust the path to where the brush matched perfectly.

Great tips.

Good learning experience.

I got this technique in the .pdf and version 11 file in zip attached from a tutorial at unleash.com by Jeff Harrison. You can distort gradients, in the .pdf file, it explains how to do this.

Since the way artistic media tool can be set up, making tire tred could be made in one program as a brush and imported to the next as well. Of course the brush could also be made in Xara. Knowing both, you can choose the technique which works best in a given circumstance.

Use the tools you have to find new techniques. Blends do not work as well in Corel vs. Xara as Xara has a zero step blend meaning you don't wait nine years for it to render like CorelDRAW. But each program has strenghts. Find what is good and use it to your advantage.

You can copy and paste these distortions into Xara as a .cmx file and the color and all comes in and you can then manipulate and distort in Xara as well.

Great advise Gman and Sally.

One thing though, how do you create an artistic media brush?
My apologies if you have explained it and I have missed it!

Andy

Sorry guys, noticed I did miss it and after re-reading g-man's explanation, I found out. Sorry about that.

Andy

Great tip on the emf workaround, Sally. Lots of possibilities in there. :D
Andy, in Corel Draw 11, I draw some shapes, group them together, and while it is still selected, switch to the artistic media brush tool. There is a little floppy disk icon in there that allows you to save the selected object as a cmx file in your hard drive. Then your custom object appears in the bottom of the dropdown list.

Thanks a lot Grafixman.

I wonder if you or Sal can solve this one......?!

You should've downloaded Sally's pdf file. I didn't know it at first, too, but the answer is in there. Export your gradient filled rectangle as an .emf file first, and import the .emf file back again into Draw. The gradient fill would then be decomposed into a group of solid filled objects. Then save the imported object group as your artistic media brush. It should then behave as you would expect it to.

Yeah i tried that mate and it wouldnt import at all.

It acts as if it will import, the placement icon comes up in the workspace, i click where i want th import to be place but nothing imports.

That is strange. Draw's import export works pretty well for me. :confused: . How about .wmf? Or if nothing works, I would be tempted to create the gradient from a blend of rectangles, then separate the blend and group them together as a regular group. But it is really odd that it's failing to import the .emf file. Perhaps something's broken in your import export filters?

Got it working!!

Superb, you would not believe how long i had been looking for the answer to that! Thats great.


Thanks a lot again.

In order to make an artistic media brush which flows nicely you want the section to be very narrow and in a horizontal arrangement. Then you get that nice gradient flowing down the middle. Of course, this does not solve the problem of the end caps, but these could be made of a circular gradient in a circle and either trimmed or in a Power Clip with no outline to finish it.

Yes, Gman, the .emf import offers infinite possibilities. The most wonderful part is that anything you do is copy and pasteable into Xara which has more advanced features in other ways and everthing remains editable.

The reason I choose 800 steps is that it comes out nice and smooth and you can work with something that doesn't look all choppy.

The .emf discovery is due to a tutorial by Jeff Harrison. His tutorials are inexpensive and just packed full of useful information, and I hightly recommend them, if you are interested. Available at unleash.com.

The reason I choose 800 steps is that it comes out nice and smooth and you can work with something that doesn't look all choppy.QUOTE]


Sally, Where is the option to change the amount of steps?
And
Does this change the file size and draw speed very much?

Andy

It is in the fountain fill dialogue box, there is a little lock so the 256 steps show grayed out, but if you unlock it, you can change this setting. It also appears on the Property bar when using the Interactive Fill Tool (flyout below the regular fill tool), again, remove the lock and you can edit. Some versions of DRAW only let you edit the steps in the Fountain Fill dialogue box. This box is available from the flyout from the standard toolbar from the Fill Tool, second button from the left or on your F keys, F11.

Impact on DRAW's performance, not much.

Impact in Xara, even less.

That is great Sally. I have never noticed that "unlock" button before.

I always had to convert the document to PDF to get it to print smoothly before! That has saved me a lot of trouble.

Thanks very much,

Andy

You have an option when exporting also to .pdf how many fountain steps you want. The higher the number for print the better. The default is 256, I believe, but I use 800 when it must be smooth.

sorry i made wrong post :(