Corel Designer Technical 12

When Corel acquired Micrografx and its Designer technical drawing software many thought that the package would be quietly subsumed into the burgeoning Corel Draw. These suspicions appeared to be confirmed after a disappointing version 9, which added little to Designer's feature set and left the interface virtually unchanged.

Then Corel surprised everybody with Designer 10, a complete overhaul that changed the software almost beyond recognition. It introduced many new tools and features as well as a complete interface overhaul, much of it incorporating or based on the tried and tested technology that was already familiar to Corel Draw users.

Corel Designer Technical Suite 12 is a new upgrade, with features such as projected 3D drawing modes, dynamic guides, dimension lines and a new B-spline drawing tool.

In addition to the main application, the suite includes Corel Photo Paint 12, Corel Trace 12 (a bitmap to vector conversion utility), Corel's Capture 12 screen-grab utility and MS Visual Basic for Applications.

Designer 12's new projected drawing modes provide a number of editable presets that constrain drawing tools to three angular planes for the production of 3D drawings. The presets define the relationship between the three drawing planes. Isometric, for example, places each plane at 30 degrees, while Diametric puts them at seven degrees, 90 degrees and 42 degrees.

In all there are 12 available presets, but you can edit these and create your own using the projected Axes docker.

Projected drawing modes are useful, but could go further. You can edit the drawing mode in the Transformation docker, but objects don't appear to maintain a relationship to the mode in which they were drawn and changing the mode without careful reference to the origin can produce unexpected results. You can, however, use the Transformation docker to produce all three sides of a 3D object from one orthogonal face.

Designer provides plenty of tools for creating shapes. Perfect shapes provides a multitude of basic shapes, arrows, flowchart and other commonly used shapes that can be edited easily. There's also a library containing more than 4,000 industry-standard symbols for architectural, electrical, mechanical and general use.

For objects you need to create from scratch, a new B-spline tool provides a way to create curved shapes. B-splines work in a similar way to Bezier curves, but rather than handles that adjust the shape of the curve on either side of the node, B-spline points drag a curve as if anchored to either side of it.

Creating shapes from other shapes has long been one of Designer's strengths. Version 9 introduced features such as the Transformation docker, the virtual segment delete tool and the reflect nodes mode. This new edition enhances the Transformation docker with the ability to change 3D projection attributes and precision co-ordinate transformations.

A new Fillet/scallop/chamfer docker allows for the quick reshaping of object corners, producing rounded, inverse rounded and squared-off corners on any curved object.

Most of the remaining new features are aimed at making the job of precision drawing faster and easier - productivity enhancements, in other words. Dynamic guides are temporary guidelines that can be pulled from snap points to help you move, align and draw objects in relation to one another.

Vector-based hatch fills can be customised and are automatically transformed when used in projected modes. Enhanced line styles can be created with specific width and can be assigned patterns such as stitching effects. This feature has been developed in response to user feedback for clothing designers. There are also three new types of dimension lines: segment, radial and diameter.

This package of new features and enhancements undoubtedly makes Designer a more capable application and will strengthen its appeal to technical illustrators. But aside from the new projected modes and the precision enhancements, this isn't a must-have upgrade for existing users.

However, given the upheaval involved in the transition from version 9 to 10, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

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