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Gary and Jessica Houghton
11-03-2007, 3:00 PM
What is the easiest way of adjusting a Corel drawing, say one of the many excellent box patterns floating around here on the creek, for different material thicknesses? Is there some tool that can make the process easier?

Gary and Jesscia Houghton
Etched!

Lee DeRaud
11-03-2007, 3:31 PM
Depends on how wide a range of thickness you want to handle...

For small variances, I just figure out what thickness the original is set for (say 1/8") and scale the whole thing to the new thickness (say 0.1", so 80%). Obviously that affects the overall size of the result.

But otherwise, unless the tabs/slots are separate objects, you end up doing a lot of node-diddling. Most of the time it's easier to redraw the "square stuff" (sides, top, bottom) from scratch, with the slots/tabs sized to your actual material, and then copy in the decorations and fiddly bits from the original drawing.

I did a macro for raw tab/slot boxes, available here (http://www.shaddysengraving.com/laser/HTML/fingerbox.html): it gives you a good starting point for a bunch of varieties and handles the material thickness issue rather elegantly (IMHO).