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Ed Harrall
03-17-2010, 9:48 PM
I need help in figuring this one out. We are engraving dog tags for our school. We built a grid board to hold 56 tags at a time. I imported the grid as a dxf file. We designed the tags in a separate corel file. Then imported them to the grid file. What I want is the easy way to to center the tag file to each squares on the grid. ( looking for something like center to page but center to the box). I have tried align and Distribute but it is grayed out. I have looked on internet for an answer no luck so far.

Thanks
Ed

Steve Clarkson
03-17-2010, 11:27 PM
I found the easiest way to do dog tags is to lay down a piece of cork and cover it in painters tape.....then in corel, set up your tags (lets say 5 rows of 10 across)......just vector cut the shape of the tags (at say 100s/10p) and then simply remove the tape that gets cut out. Then you simply place your tag in the cut out and it's perfectly aligned.

Frank Corker
03-18-2010, 7:38 AM
Ed Steve is right. Make a template and cut the shapes then drop tags in. It doesnt need to be cork either it could be cardboard, only needs to stop tags from moving around table. Once you've done that all you need then is do the lining up in Corel. How big are the tags? you might ask, scan them at 300dpi and import into corel then make boxes around each tag shape for exact shape. If you are struggling you already have my email address, I'll help sort it.

Rodne Gold
03-18-2010, 8:07 AM
If the box is a closed entity and the tag shap is one too , then click the tag shape and then the box and press "E" and then press "C" , they will centre to one another , you might have to select the box and then the tag , I can't remember which one centres to which
Another way to do this is turn on the osnap modes and select centre , as you move a tag it will snap to the centre of the square if you have turned on "snap to objects" -
A Corel grid is NOT a square and centreing to the boxes wont work this way... and a DXF import might not come in as a closed entity or might require ungrouping etc.
You could also import a single tag and use "step and repeat" to array it - you need to do rows and columns as 2 "step and repeats" unlike acad that sets up a proper array and does it in one go.
If you want a closed box and a closed tag entity - the easiest way is to use smartfill on em , delete the tag , and unfill the results and you will now have closed tag and box entities.

Ed Harrall
03-18-2010, 12:23 PM
Thanks for all the quick reply's. Have a cnc router what we did was make template on the router. Using a different program to make the template. So we wanted to make sure the laser was cutting in the right places we imported the dxf file. What I was not getting to work at first was the align and distribute tool. What we were doing was dropping in the tag clicking off it and then trying to realign it. ( it was locked in the box and I could not select just the text to move it inside the box) With help from Doug in a message I was able to get it to work last night!:D The trick: DON'T Click off the import and also click on the box before using the Align and Distribute tool. 3 Different classes are working on this project. So that makes it a little more challenging. We are Producing about 800 tags this run. Lasering both sides of the tags. All other suggestions are going to be filed away for later use. Sometimes my mind runs in circles trying to remember how to do things with 4 different drawing programs to work with.
Ed