Cut some lines in Corel

[Pete Simmons]

Corel question.

I have this hawk shape I want to place inside an oval vector cut it and just leave it attached by the wing corners.

Lotza trouble erasing parts of the lines. When I can do it, it makes many of the hairlines double lines.

How do I do this and leave it all 1 hairline for cutting?

I bet there is a simple way to do this but over the last few hours I cannot do it.

[Steve McKee]

Pete, is this what you're trying to accomplish? If so all I did was select one of the curves, hold down the shift key and select the other then click Arrange and Weld.

Steve

[Pete Thomas]

Pete, see attached, is this what you were trying to accomplish? If so, I moved the hawk outline above the oval, selected both and then did a shaping weld command.

-pete

[Dave Jones]

I thought I knew what you wanted until I looked at your file. The oval is open at the bottom, which confused me. I thought that you wanted to create an oval cutout with the wings in the center, not cut out. But with the oval open at the bottom the area below the wings would not be fully cut out.

So, I'll explain how I would do what I originally thought you wanted to do and maybe that will give you an idea for what you actually want to do. Or if you can clarify what you're final piece would be like I could change the explanation to fit.

There may be a few ways to do this, but here's how I would do it.

1 - Create a shape larger than both the oval and the wings. If I was making en emplem it would be the outside shape of that.

2 - Select it and the oval and subtract the oval from that shape. (using the front minus back or back minus front icons on the toolbar, depending on the order of objects in the object manager)

3 - Select this new shape and the wings and hit the Weld button in the toolbar. This puts the wings in the hole and cuts the tips of the wings off by combining them with the larger shape.

4 - Right click the object and select Break Curve Apart. This gives you the individual sections. The top of the oval and top of the wings, the bottom of the oval and bottom of the wings, and the outside of the larger shape.

5 - if the larger shape was not the outside edge of the final thing being cut, then select it and delete it.

Here's an image to show the steps:

http://www.redtengu.com/images/raw/wings_cut.gif

[Dave Jones]

Well, 2 other answers came in while I was writing mine, so clearly there's a few ways to do it. :)

[Mike Null]

Let me offer another idea. create a new oval slightly samller in diameter than the hawks wings are wide. Select the hawk the under "effects" select power clip and point to the oval. That will place the hawk inside the oval.

[Dave Jones]

Mike, won't that leave the oval intact, which would then cut out the wings at the wingtips? I was thinking he doesn't want a line across the tip of the wings, so they won't be cut out completely from the background.

[Mike Null]

Dave:
You're right.

[Pete Simmons]

Thanks for the ideas. They worked on the full oval but I need only part of the oval.

Here is a picture that I did cut even with all the double lines ( lifted the cover to stop the double cuts) and I attached a new Corel file that shows mora. All I need to do is remove the part of the oval below the snow scene.

http://www.laserimagearts.com/images/silverhawk.jpg

[Mike Null]

Try this. I used virtual segment delete in X3.

[Pete Simmons]

Thats it. Thanks


If you have a minute explaine virtual segment delete a little.


I have tried to use it and the knife tool in Ver 12 with no luck.


I can not even delete the middle part of a simple line.


I draw a simple line with the line tool and try to remove some of the middle and get nowhere.

[Mike Null]

Pete:

This was my first attempt to use the VSD tool and to be honest it was one of those "look what I found" deals.

That said, I am now a full fledged "expert" on VSD, so I'll attempt to answer your question but don't bet money on it.

I believe a segment is defined as a line between two nodes. I joined the snow scene to the oval on both the right and left sides. That made a segment of the portion of the oval within the snow scene thus deletable with the VSD tool.

To add nodes to a line double click on it with the shape tool.

[Mike Null]

Just as a follow up to the last post. A segment is not made up of a line with a node at each end. I tried to find a definition with no success.

[Pete Simmons]

With Mike's help I got my design to work.

Since I have drawn simple lines and shapes via various drawing tools then tried to delete a piece out of the middle.

No luck with knife tool of virtual segment delete - the whole line goes away.


Is this a bug with ver 12 or am I not using the cut tools correctly.


Looks like X3 maybe closer than I thought.

[Mike Null]

Pete:
I've continued to play with this feature with only a small bit of success. For example I have not been able to make VSD work to delete one side of a simple rectangle but if I combine two or more objects I can manage to delete a segment. Adding nodes doesn't seem to make a difference contrary to my earlier post.

While experimenting with this I discovered something else that will be helpful to those who cut patterns or vinyl.

It is on the weld tool bar and appears when two or more objects are combined. When all objects are selected clicking this button places an exact outline around the outside of the entire drawing.

[Tim Goldstein]

Here is the definition I found for a virtual line segment:

virtual line segments, which are portions of objects that are between intersections. For example, you can delete a loop in a line that crosses over itself, or loops in line segments in which two or more objects overlap.

I then played with some bezier lines to get more of a feel for what the virtual line segment delete does. Very interesting tool. Try drawing some objects that over lap (or beizier curves that loop on themselves) and then use the VSD tool. It seems that if a line intersects another you can delete it as if the line had a node at the intersection.

Guess I really should spend some time learning the new stuff in X3. There are lots of great tools to make things I have done the hard way easy.

Tim

[Dave Jones]

Mike, when you say you can't use it to delete one side of a box, did you convert the box to curves first? Combining shapes converts everything to curves, and node editing can only happen to objects that are curves. While a box is still a box object it isn't made up of the same kind of line segments that it is after converting it to curves.

[Mike Null]

Dave:
I did try that with a simple box but the VSD deleted the whole thing. I concur with Tim's finding though I'm not sure yet that it's foolproof.

[Pete Simmons]

When I converted to curves I was able to delete what I needed and get the shape I wanted .......But.

That is when the double lines appeared.

Not just double lines but double lines with joined ends like ropes. Very difficult to delete one set.