I just started to work with CorelDraw and would appreciate your help. I work for a company which is illuminating logos. We are manually inserting little rectangle shapes (these are the LED lights) into a logo made out of letters (I am attaching an example). This is very time consuming. Isn´t there a quicker way for the little rectangle shapes to move and arrange themself automatically inside the logo? The logo´s change in shapes, angles, length
and width. Therefore, we are using 3 different sizes of the rectangle shapes. Thank you for your advice. Kind regards, Patricia
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2Dashed strokes can be used to do that for the contours, a pattern fill of rectangles can fill the centers.– WebsterCommented Sep 15, 2017 at 13:59
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Hello Webster, thank you for your comment, could you please elaborate a little more. Is there a function for this action (to input and organize the blue rectangle shapes into the letters), or do I have to drag and drop each blue rectangle shape into the letters more or less individually ?– PatriciaCommented Sep 15, 2017 at 14:53
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I suppose you'd have to manually arrange them at some point. how do you define when to use these different sized rectangles?– LucianoCommented Sep 15, 2017 at 14:56
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Hi Sorry, I was on my phone. I'll try to demonstrate the dashed stroke and fill methods today.– WebsterCommented Sep 15, 2017 at 15:37
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Hi Luciano, I decide on the size of the letters, the bigger the letters the bigger the rectangles. I guess this is not easy to program - the rectangles need to retrace the letter shapes. Sometimes one row of rectangles is not enough and we arrange them in 2 rows as on the attached image (PRO).– PatriciaCommented Sep 15, 2017 at 15:39
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1 Answer
I do not believe any automatic placement systems occur - at least as a free gift from some propellerhead altough probably someone capable enough has read your question.
Waiting for a miracle you can enhance your manual system by taking into use a free tool - Inkscape. Its path effect "Pattern along a path" probably is useful.See the image:
The green P is the outline of the artistically right shape. The blue P is an inset (=offset) path which is considered good for the led chains. The green rectangle is a led in the right size. The red circle is for inspecting do all leds really fit. It must be large enough to totally cover a led + its solder joints.
See the following image:
The green rectangle is copied to the clipboard, the blue P is splitted with the path node tool to segments. All nodes at the corners are the splitting points.
Every segment (=6) has got the path effect pattern along a path, pattern is pasted from the clipboard and mode = repeated (no stretching)
The spacing is adjusted separately to every segment for uniform filling. The magenta segments have been shifted manually a little downwards for better symmetry. The curved rectangles have the correct length only in the middle line. If the formation happen to look out dense, then the red circle or a bunch of rotated rectangles can help to see, if everything fits.
If straight rectangles are needed instead af the curved ones, they can be painted manually. The pen tool snaps easily from midpoint to midpoint. The following image has straight black strokes instead of the curved rectangles. They can be converted to paths, if no fill is allowed.
