COREL DRAW CHALLENGE
A series of videos to train students to use Corel Draw for their unique laser cutting projects. These videos were created in partnership with the Carroll School Fab Lab, a school for children who have dyslexia.
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A note on implementation
These videos are meant to not only teach the students how to use the software, but also how to set up their workflow and use the software to be creative. Though some of the beginning videos are more prescriptive; the challenges become less about following instructions and more about offering up options for students to be able to create a work that is uniquely their own.
The videos offer up visual and auditory representations of the content, and we have included the transcriptions of the videos. We would have liked to included a way for the text to be highlighted in time with the audio. The videos were edited to further clarify certain important tools and concepts by magnifying the video to make it easier to see. There were also images and diagrams added in as overlays to further clarify concepts.
The videos were separated into smaller chunks so that students can either follow through from beginning to end if they are unfamiliar with the software, or they can skip to what they don't know. They can also re-visit certain skills without having to navigate through a long video to find what they need.
When designing training materials for your space, you may want to consider offering up several kinds of materials such as pamphlets, video tutorials, project challenges that build on skills, and demos. You may also want to think about the kinds of projects or uses you want your students to be aware of in regards to the tools. For example, you may notice that students are using the laser cutter just to engrave images onto wood, and sticking to creating mostly two-dimensional projects. You may want to use the trainings to encourage and showcase the capabilities of the laser cutter to create joints and boxes.
Common Core Standards
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.MD.A.1
Measure the length of an object by selecting and using appropriate tools such as rulers, yardsticks, meter sticks, and measuring tapes.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.MD.A.2
Measure the length of an object twice, using length units of different lengths for the two measurements; describe how the two measurements relate to the size of the unit chosen.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.MD.A.4
Measure to determine how much longer one object is than another, expressing the length difference in terms of a standard length unit.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.MD.B.4
Generate measurement data by measuring lengths using rulers marked with halves and fourths of an inch. Show the data by making a line plot, where the horizontal scale is marked off in appropriate units— whole numbers, halves, or quarters.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.MD.D.8
Solve real world and mathematical problems involving perimeters of polygons, including finding the perimeter given the side lengths, finding an unknown side length, and exhibiting rectangles with the same perimeter and different areas or with the same area and different perimeters.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.4.MD.A.2
Use the four operations to solve word problems involving distances, intervals of time, liquid volumes, masses of objects, and money, including problems involving simple fractions or decimals, and problems that require expressing measurements given in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such as number line diagrams that feature a measurement scale.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.4.MD.A.3
Apply the area and perimeter formulas for rectangles in real world and mathematical problems. For example, find the width of a rectangular room given the area of the flooring and the length, by viewing the area formula as a multiplication equation with an unknown factor.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.G.A.1
Describe objects in the environment using names of shapes, and describe the relative positions of these objects using terms such as above, below, beside, in front of, behind, and next to.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.G.A.2
Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.G.A.2
Compose two-dimensional shapes (rectangles, squares, trapezoids, triangles, half-circles, and quarter-circles) or three-dimensional shapes (cubes, right rectangular prisms, right circular cones, and right circular cylinders) to create a composite shape, and compose new shapes from the composite shape.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.G.A.1
Understand that shapes in different categories (e.g., rhombuses, rectangles, and others) may share attributes (e.g., having four sides), and that the shared attributes can define a larger category (e.g., quadrilaterals). Recognize rhombuses, rectangles, and squares as examples of quadrilaterals, and draw examples of quadrilaterals that do not belong to any of these subcategories.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.7.G.A.1
Solve problems involving scale drawings of geometric figures, including computing actual lengths and areas from a scale drawing and reproducing a scale drawing at a different scale.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.7.G.A.2
Draw (freehand, with ruler and protractor, and with technology) geometric shapes with given conditions. Focus on constructing triangles from three measures of angles or sides, noticing when the conditions determine a unique triangle, more than one triangle, or no triangle.
Table of Contents
Click on the title to view, or scroll down to view in order
​​​Mini Challenge 1
Bonus Round, Completing the Challenge
Mini Challenge 1
Introduction
Hello everyone!
Welcome to your first Corel Draw Challenge.
In the next series of mini-challenges we will be working towards creating a picture frame.
It can be similar to the one that is here or it might be a little bit different.
Let’s get started!
Creating a Document
The first thing that we are going to want to do is find our CorelDraw software.
It looks like this green circle over here,
we’re going to double-click on CorelDraw to open up the software.
We’re going to skip registering for an account.
…
You’ll see a welcome screen pop up.
The next thing that we’re going to want to do is create our document!
To create our document, we are going to first go to File, and then go to new.
We have a couple of options here
The first thing that we want to do is name our document
It might be a good idea to name your document something that will help you remember what you are making in the end.
Since we are going to be making a picture frame for this challenge, I’m going to name my document “Picture Frame”.
I'm going to leave everything the same
and the next thing I can do is figure out what is the size of my final project.
In the end we are going to laser cut out our picture frame and we need to make sure that our document size is the same size as the piece of wood we are going to use.
The wood that we have at the Fab Lab is twelve inches by twelve inches, so that’s already been set up for me.
If you have a different number you’re going to want to change it to twelve inches by twelve inches.
Everything else we can leave the same.
And we’re going to press OK.
And here we go! We have our square piece of wood!
So this is our canvas, this is where we are going to be drawing our picture frame
Drawing a Rectangle
All right, let's begin our picture frame!
The first thing that we are going to want to do is to create a series of rectangles to create the frame itself.
Right now we are on the pick tool, which is in the upper-left-hand corner over here, and this is just our cursor. This is what we are going to use to pick up things, to move them around our workplane and to change around dimensions.
On this left-hand side are a lot of our really important tools that we are going to be using throughout these challenges.
The one that we want to find right now is our rectangle tool. Which looks like this shape over here and if I hover over it, you can see that’s the rectangle tool.
I’m going to click the rectangle tool and you’ll see my cursor looks a bit different.
I’m going to click and drag, and now I can create any kind of shape rectangle that I want. So I’m just going to create a random rectangle here.
So I have my rectangle, you’ll see that these squares have popped up and what this means is that if I go back to my pick tool, I can kind of drag some of these dimensions around and continue to change what my rectangle looks like.
So, I am making a picture frame for a specific photo that I have, and I know that my photo is four inches by six inches in the end. So I am going to make my picture frame four inches by six inches.
Right now, you see I have this tiny little square. So I can either continue to use these black squares and try to see if I can figure out a way to get to the size or the shape that I want.
You’re going to notice that as I drag things around in this rectangle, these numbers up here are changing. So these numbers up here are our width and our height of our shape.
So I can either continue to drag and see if I can get to the kind of dimension that I want. You’ll see it’s kind of hard to do that.
Or I can just type it in. I know that again I want my rectangle to be six inches by four inches, so I’m just going to type in six inches by four inches, and if I press enter, I now have my rectangle.
Making a Border
Okay, so now that we have our rectangle, we are going to want to make the border of our picture frame. So we’re going to need to make another rectangle.
If you remember, to make a rectangle it is on the left-hand side over here. So I’m just going to click and drag to make our larger rectangle that will be our frame. So, right now it looks kind of funky, and it’s not quite in the center.
So the first thing that I’m going to want to do is I want to make sure that I have in my design I have a one inch border around my picture, so from this long edge to this long edge I want there to be an inch difference. And from this edge to this edge I want an inch, and kind of all the way around.
So I’m going to have to do a little bit of math. So I know that my smaller rectangle is four inches on the shorter side and six inches on this longer side. I want to add an inch between this edge and this edge, as well as an inch between here and here.
So in total I’m going to be adding two inches and that means I’m going to add from my kind of 6 inches over here, another two inches meaning I’ll have eight inches on my longer side and for my shorter side which is four inches, adding two inches I’m going to get six inches on this shorter side here.
So, I’m going to type in my new measurements of eight inches wide by six inches tall, and press enter.
Okay, so now I should have, I’m getting something that looks close to what I want, but it’s kind of not aligned the way I want it to. I wanted it perfectly an inch around.
If you want to do something creative you move things around and maybe you want a kind of really small bottom over here, and a really large place to write your text. So, you can be totally creative, but I kind of want everything centered, so I’m going to have to use my align tools.
So I have my align tools all the way here on the right-hand side of my screen, but you might actually not have that open up yet. So if you don’t have this open up yet, what you’re going to want to do is
go into your window
go into dockers
go into align and distribute.
Once you click on that you should have pop-up on the right-hand side of your screen.
Okay, so I’m going to need to select both of these rectangles in order to align them so I’m going to click on my smaller rectangle and I know that it is selected if these black boxes come up. Then, I’m going to hold down my shift key and click on my larger rectangle and now they are both selected.
And now you’ll see that these buttons kind of pop back up and I’m going to align the centers horizontally and I’m going to align the centers vertically.
Now I should have this perfect, my larger rectangle and my little rectangle perfectly in center of each other.
Grouping/ The Basic Picture Frame
Now that I have my rectangles perfectly centered, I want to make sure that I keep them centered like this no matter where I move them around. So right now, if I kind of click on this rectangle, uh! I’ve already messed up my orientation.
I’m going to go back and re-do my align. So Im going to, I have this selected, I’m going to press shift and click my smaller rectangle. I’m going to press my align horizontal and align vertical.
And the next thing I’m going to do to keep this picture frame the way that it looks is I’m going to click and drag, and you’ll see this blue dotted line come up. You want to make sure that it captures all of your shapes.
So I’m going to click, drag, and release, and now I have all of my shapes selected, and then I’m going to press control g, and that will group the two shapes together. So now, I un-click and I want to move this little rectangle, you’ll see that they are both moving at the same time.
This also means that I can change the size, keeping this kind of one inch border if I move things or create a larger picture frame or a smaller picture frame.
The distance between these two will change, so it won’t be an inch anymore, but I’ll kind of have the same proportion that I like.
So if I really want to change things around easily and say “oh I want to make a picture thats three times the size”, or I want a really tiny one, I now have these two shapes aligned with each other in the same way.
So congratulations! You’ve finished your first mini-challenge, which was to create a basic picture frame!
Bonus Round!
You have completed your first mini challenge by making a rectangular picture frame, but a rectangular picture frame is kind of boring and you might want to do something a bit more interesting using different kinds of shapes.
So, Corel Draw has options for you to make circles and ellipses as well as different types of polygons that you might want to use in your final project if you want to make something a little bit more interesting than just the rectangular picture frame.
I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with!
So, the first step would be to find your, kind of, shapes toolbar again. So that’s on the left-hand side. You’ll remember when we made rectangles our rectangle tool was right here. So underneath that rectangle tool there are, there’s the ellipse tool and the polygon tool.
So we’ll start with the ellipse tool, so an ellipse is just a circle that might not have equal, kind of, sides. So if I click on my ellipse tool it goes to this cursor over here which you can see. I’m now on the ellipse tool, and now if I click and drag I can make any kind of funky shape that I want so I can make something that looks more like an actual circle, or I can make something a little bit more egg-shaped.
So, if I want to make sure that what I’ve drawn is a circle, I’m going to go to my object size, and I’m going to go to my width and height measurements and make sure they’re the same. So I’m going to type in lets say six inches, by six inches, and if I press enter it’s now a perfect circle.
You’ll see that there’s this lock ratio tool, so if I want to make sure that even if I make this circle small or large that I am always keeping it at a circle. So as in, the same width and height, so if I press lock right now and I go back to my pick tool, as I’m changing the size of this circle it is always going to be a circle.
If I unlock that, and now I kind of play around with some of the dimensions, now I’m getting some kind of weird, funkier shapes going on.
So, maybe you want to make something that looks like a kind of funny egg shape. So I just have my ellipse here, and then if I want to make the frame, I would do the same thing I did with the rectangle. So I would go and draw another ellipse.
Let’s see what are the dimensions of our larger one. They are about three inches by six inches, so I’ll make this one two inches by four inches and I’ll press enter. And then I can do the same thing I did before. So now that this ellipse is selected, I can hold my shift key, press on my bigger circle, align horizontal and vertical, and now I have something kind of interesting and round shaped.
All right, so that’s using the ellipse or circle tool.
The other tool that we have is our polygon tool, which again is on the left-hand side of our toolbar. So if I click on the polygon tool, you’ll see that my cursor has changed, and now I’m going to do the same thing and I’m going to click and drag.
So automatically it is giving me this seven-sided polygon over here. What if you want a triangle, or you want to make something with twenty sides, or anything in between?
So, for the polygon tool, if you go to the upper part our screen over here, you’ll see that there’s this little shape that comes up as well as a number over here. That’s our points or sides. So right now we have seven points, meaning seven sides. I can change this to three and I’ll get a triangle, or I can change this to ten and get something funky like this.
So, whatever you guys want to do is fine, and you can still change around and squish things and move things around as much as you would like to.
The same process would go if you want to make kind of that interior shape. So I can even actually let’s say make my picture frame have a circular inside and then kind of this interesting ten-sided polygon on the outside.
So, feel free to play around with these tools and come up with what you think is a really cool-looking picture frame.
Working With Text
Okay, so now you should have some kind of picture frame. I have my kind of rectangular picture frame, you might have something that looks like a circle or a triangle or whatever else you have decided.
If you remember going back to our original picture frame that I showed at the beginning of the challenge, I had this family vacation text at the top of my picture frame, kind of attached to this larger frame itself that I made earlier.
So, I’m going to show you how you can maybe work with text to make your picture frame even more personalized.
So, I’m going to go back to my original file. The first thing that we are going to want to do is actually figure out how to even get to our text box.
So if you go back to this left-hand side over here you’ll see this A, and that will be our text tool. So if I click on the text tool, my cursor now changes and you’ll see this A. And if I click and drag, I can now make a box where my text fits into. And if I start typing right now, you might not be able to see it, it’s really small. So, if I look at the top of my workstation here, I have new, kind of, options that pop-up.
So, the first option right here that says Arial, is my font so I can use something really simple for my font, or I can do something kind of that looks like handwriting, or I can do something kind of crazier. I have a lot of options for my text, and you guys can choose whatever kind of text style you want to choose. So I’ll choose something kind of big and bold.
And the next thing I might want to do is change my font size just so I can see it. So again, if I start typing, I can’t really tell what I’m typing. I’m going to highlight my text now, and so all I did was just click and drag my text, and I’m going to, kind of, change my font size. You’ll see that once I highlight over a size, my text also changes at the same time.
So I think something like, this size is going to work, or maybe even bigger. I’m just going to delete my text, because I don’t actually want this gibberish on my final project, I want it to say “Family Vacation”. Like this, I actually want to change the font again, this is a little bit too thin for me. We’re going to go back to this one. And, my size is still wrong, so I’m going to go back and see if I can… maybe something like that.
Ok, so now I have this text box over here that I can start out with.
Creating Outlines From Text
Okay, so we are going to be laser cutting this in the end, and so we kind of have to do some things to this text to make it look kind of like the original file that we had over here.
So you’ll notice that here, my text doesn’t have any black in it anymore so it’s not filled in, and we just have these kinds of outlines that we’re going to cut out on our picture frame.
So, right now our text is filled in with black, and what that means for the laser cutter, is that it won’t cut all the way through our piece of wood, it will just kind of burn it a little bit, and get some color there.
So actually, I could leave my text the way that it is right now and if I move it to my picture frame, so these two thinner lines get cut out all the way by my laser cutter, but this text over here will just get etched into the wood, so it will just be the color. So I can actually just do this and have a pretty cool picture frame as well.
But, I really want to show you guys how to do something a little bit more advanced. So, in order to do that I’m going to need my, kind of, settings for my text. And so, that doesn’t actually show up on the right-hand side over here, so I’m going to do the same thing as I did before.
I’m going to go to my Window,
I’m going to go to Dockers,
and I’m going to find text,
and then Im just going to say text properties.
Now I have all of this information here that I didn’t have before. So you’ll get to see the font choice here, the font size right here, and what we’re going to need to do is we need to get rid of the fill that is on the inside. So the fact that it is black and its going to etch is something that we don’t want. We want it to just be white, or non-existent.
So, I’m going to go to my uniform fill drop-down here and I’m just going to say “No Fill”, and you’ll see it kind of disappear. So now it doesn’t exist at all. So we want to get back our outlines of our text, so we’re going to go to our third option here, and we’re going to choose hairline outline.
So, for our laser cutter, the way that it knows to cut all the way through our piece of wood is if we make our lines hairline. So, if I had made this line, let’s say now, three points, and you’ll see it looks really, really dark, it actually won’t cut out my text. It will just think to etch this really thin line around my text.
So, I’m going to go back in there, and say hairline outline. Okay, perfect.
So, you’ll notice that the lines that are around this text look a lot thinner than the lines of our picture frame. So let’s go actually back to our picture frame, and make sure that that is also hairline outline because we want to cut it all together. So, now that I have clicked on my grouped picture frame, if I go to the top of my work plane, it actually is half a point! So, I guessed correctly, so we’re going to go to our drop-down menu and press hairline outline.
Okay, so everything now should be the right thickness if I click on it again. Perfect.
Using the Weld Tool
Now we have our text in an outline that will cut all the way through on our laser cutter, but we still want to get it connected to our picture frame just like we had in our original file.
So, in order to do that, we are going to have to learn how to use the weld tool. And we are also going to do some aligning again.
So the first thing I want to do, is I kind of want to make sure that this is kind of aligned in the center here, so I’m going to click on my outlined text and my picture frame (let’s see if I can do it this way, great)
And then I’m just going to use my arrow key , press down until it’s kind of, overlapping the picture frame. So I want to make sure, let’s see, if I zoom in I want to make sure that the parts of my A and my O don’t get too kind of squished in here, so I want it kind of just about there, but not, kind of, you know, so small that when it gets cut out of the laser cutter it’ll break off.
So something like, maybe like, a quarter inch or so embedded is good.
Okay, so now we have our outline, kind of, overlapping our picture frame, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to press Shift and click on our picture frame, and then we’re going to look at the top our screen again, and you’ll see kind of these squares that are overlapping each other. And these are different ways that we can combine shapes. The way that we are going to want to use these tools for this instance is to use the weld tool, which is this first option over here.
So now if I click weld, on no! I’ve actually lost the inside of my rectangle!
Okay, well, good thing I still know how to make a rectangle and align.
So I’m actually going to go back to my rectangle tool. I’m just going to draw a rectangle here, go up to my dimensions and my dimensions of my picture were four inches by six inches. Press enter. I’m going to click on my inside rectangle, click on this outside one that I’ve made. I’m going to press my align, distribute. Okay, now that’s looking pretty good.
I kind of lost a little bit of my width over here because of the text, so I can do some math, or I can move this down using the arrow key to where it looks a little bit better, so maybe something like that.
And again, we’re going to want to group this all together. So I’m going to drag and click, press control G.
The last thing that I’m going to want to do is make sure that everything is hairline outline, so that we’ll be able to cut it out on the laser cutter
Send To Laser Cutter
Okay, so now we are ready to send our laser cut to print out on our laser cutter.
So what we are going to do first, is we’re going to go to file,
then we are going to go to print,
and this screen will pop-up
We’re going to change our printer to say Laser Cutter, and then we’re going to go to our Preferences, and then this blue screen will pop-up.
So we want to make sure that our Auto Focus is checked on, we DO NOT want to have our Center-Engraving turned on at all.
We’re going to change our piece size to the piece size of our wood, which again we said was twelve inches by twelve inches. And then we’re going to look up our settings for our laser cutting depending on what kind of material we’re cutting this out from.
I’m using a piece of quarter-inch wood, you can use acrylic or some other material.
So, in order to do that, we’re going to change our speed, our power, and our frequency. So I’m going to take the default settings that I know will work according to the samples that we have in the FabLab. So I’m just going to work on making sure that everything is correct.
Okay, and you’ll notice that I only change the vector setting and not the raster setting because I’m not doing any of that kind of engraving, I’m just cutting all the way through. I’m going to press okay, just to save those settings.
And then I’m going to press preview, just to make sure everything looks right. So this looks right, and looks like what I want it to look like in the end, and then the last thing that I’m going to do is, I’m just going to press print again to send my job over to the laser cutter.
And, Congratulations! You have finished your first Corel Draw Challenge. You’ve made a picture frame, and not just any picture frame, but one with text embedded into it and you’ve been able to cut out on the laser cutter so congrats again!