Another Coreldraw 5X question

[John Johnson 2]

Lets say I create an object and do all sorts of manipulations by adding and subtracting bits and pieces. I now combine everything and I have the finished object. The object is now rotated through 90 degrees. This move is the final move to complete the object.

How do I stop the rotation anlge from displaying 90 degrees. The object is now at its correct angle of rotation.

The same applies to scale. Oce the object is completed I decide to scale it by 50% This is now the final size of the object and it should read 100%. How do I change it to be 100%

[Mike Null]

Convert to curves answers both questions.

[Richard Rumancik]

Mike's answer of "convert to curves" will probably work as long as it is not a curve already. It seems to work on simple shapes like circles and rectangles that aren't curves. But if you find that "convert to curves" is greyed out then you are out of luck.

I was digging around and found someone who invented this work-around: Select the shape you want to "reset". Then click Arrange -> Shaping -> Weld. Since there is only one item selected, it will weld to itself (so there is no change to the object). But at the same time, it will reset the size and rotation to 100% and 0 degrees. At least it seems to work for me. Tell me if it works or if it fails . . .

I think you could make a hotkey to do this if you do it often.

[John Johnson 2]

Neither option works.

Convert to curves has no effect on the object. (tried it)

The second option hangs Coreldraw. It is probably because the object is already a complex collection of combined and grouped curves and text.

[Mike Null]

You say "combined", did you actually combine them first?

I believe Richard's explanation is a good one but if you combined the drawing first that may throw a monkey wrench into the solution.

Could we see the drawing?

[Richard Rumancik]

Is it actual text that you have in the file? (or curves?) I think you have too much going on in the drawing to use the Weld technique at this stage. The method I proposed is good for use on an outline or shape, not to take an entire drawing of mixed vectors and text.

If you split the drawing back into vectors and separate out the text perhaps it can work for you if you operate only on the object on which you want to "reset" the parameters. I think you need to use the trick earlier in the drawing process.

The trick works only if you select a curve that is not actually weldable to anything else selected. Basically, it works on a single object. If Corel is telling you that there are multiple objects selected then it will fail. You want CorelDraw to "try" to weld; it doesn't actually find anything to weld to, so it just resets the scale and rotation and leaves the geometry alone.

I played around a bit with grouped entities and could not make it fail so as Mike says we need to see the file or an example to help further.

I also discovered another thing. If I have two shapes that are scaled and rotated, they each have separate scale and rotation parameters displayed. If I combine them and then immediately break them apart, the parameters seem to reset. So potentially this could be another work-around in some cases. I haven't experimented a lot with it though.

It would have been nice if CorelDraw just had a simple reset command on transformed objects but it doesn't. You have to make it "forget" by indirect means.

When Corel hangs from a command, I always feel that it is a program weakness as there should be filters to recover from a command that it cannot process. Hanging from a command (valid or not) is not acceptable to me.

[John Johnson 2]

>>It would have been nice if CorelDraw just had a simple reset command on transformed objects but it doesn't. You have to make it "forget" by indirect means.

I suppose that the object scale and orientation is set by operations that alter the structural definition of the outermost curve; like the various joining functions. The problem of course is that you have to perform some or other operation on an already complete drawing that is comprised of many entities.

This lot probably stems from the hierarchical structure of the of the entities within the object. There is a need for a "dirty" reset function...

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I also discovered another thing. If I have two shapes that are scaled and rotated, they each have separate scale and rotation parameters displayed. If I combine them and then immediately break them apart, the parameters seem to reset. So potentially this could be another work-around in some cases. I haven't experimented a lot with it though.

This has worked for me with all sorts of items using X3 and X6. While it's a hassle, you can convert the outline item to an object, then break it apart, turn the filled items back to outlines and combine or weld them back together. The scale and rotation will have reset back to 100% and 0.

[Richard Rumancik]

I don't know the logic that the designers used when creating the Transformation commands, but it seems like they wanted to store the history of what transformations were performed on an object within the object info itself. Thus if the object has been rotated, stretched, resized, skewed then at some future point you can re-select the object and undo all the cumulative transformations performed upon it. It is kind of like a separate "undo" on transformations. (Although I don't think it works on the "position" transformation). For the life of me I don't know why someone would want to undo several transformations at a later stage of drawing development.

Once some other function is performed on the object (like a trim command) then the transformation history is discarded. The "weld to itself" and "combine ->break apart" workarounds effectively force CorelDraw to discard the history without affecting the object.

[Andrea Weissenseel]

If you break them apart and directly combine them again, angle and size are reset

[John Johnson 2]

3DS Max and Maya work in exactly the same way, they also allow you to unroll all the transformations, just a lot more intelligently. I think Coreldraw's fundamental drawing object ends up having a deep herachical structure of entities within entities like an upside down tree. What would be really useful would be to see that structure in a tree view and then to be able to combine nodes to flatten the structure out. The exact same effect as exporting the entire drawing as a DXF and then importing it again. All the entities within the drawing object are now flattened out into a single node. The export / import idea seems good to dump all the history too. The only thing is that one would have to rework all the combined and grouped objects. Another idea might be to save the drawing to a earlier version of Coreldraw or to a different type like WMF (I doubt that WMF retains the history) Another thing to consider is the effect it would have on drawing size and load times if all that stuff got dumped...

Food for thought.

[Glen Monaghan]

Would selecting your object, "ungroup all" and "break curves apart" be the same sort of "flatten" you are trying to accomplish, John?

[John Johnson 2]

I doubt it. If you are still able to undo your changes then it means that the change history is still contained in each entity within the object.

[Glen Monaghan]

Give it a try. I just took a bunch of objects, rotated them 30 degrees, grouped them (which resulted in a group with 0 rotation), rotated 45 degrees more. Then I duplicated the group and the copy showed the same 45 degree rotation value as the original. I ungrouped all, combined all, broke curve apart to get every curve as a separate object with 0 rotation. I saved the file, closed and reopened to find that the original group still showed 45 degree rotation but the duplicated/grouped/ungrouped all/combined/broke apart objects all showed 0 degree rotation. I could select the original and arrange/clear transformations to "undo" the 45 degree rotation, but not so with the processed curves.

-Glen

[Steve Clarkson]

I think Andrea has it......try to ungroup all then regroup. It works for me.

[Richard Rumancik]

I think Andrea has it......try to ungroup all then regroup. It works for me.

I think you mean break apart -> combine. Or else combine -> break apart, depending on what you have. Toggling these resets the parameters.

John, sure you can export in some format and re-import but I think you would lose too much doing that. I am not sure why you need to get rid of so much info and what problem it is causing. I understood the logic behind wanting to reset the scale and rotation (which I think is solved) but you seem to be concerned with a lot more than that. I think exporting and re-importing will end up causing a lot of other work and it is not clear to me what problem it would solve.

[John Johnson 2]

@Richard - agreed.