Teach Yourself
CorelDRAW 8 in 24 Hours

Hour 6
Defining Outlines

In Hour 1 you discovered the quick and easy way to assign or change the color of the outline of any selected object(s). Just choose the Pick tool to select the object(s) and then right-click on the color palette to assign an outline color.

Ah, but there's so much more! CorelDRAW 8 provides a plethora of outline styles, such as thick and thin, dashed and dotted. In Figure 6.1, our resident artist Paul Mikulecky from Electronic Design Studio has taken the magazine cover for Zoo Review and spiffed it up with a custom outline around the lion, as well as some interesting fills. (You'll learn to apply special fills in Hour 7, "Mixing Up Fills.")

Figure 6.2 zooms in on the lion to show off a couple of the techniques Paul applied. You can see that the lion now has a thick, broken line for an outline instead of the original, default solid thin line.

Now that you have a taste of what outlines can do, time to dive in and examine how to apply these effects. This lesson shows you how to create various outlines as well as to set default outline styles.

Figure 6.1.

Adding outlines and fills to the magazine cover.

Figure 6.2.

The lion outfitted with a dashed line outline.

Creating Outlines

You can assign outline styles in several ways in CorelDRAW 8. As you saw in Hour 4, the CorelDRAW 8 environment usually supplies you with multiple options for accomplishing almost any task, and that is true of assigning outlines as well. You can define outlines from a rollup, from a flyout, or from a Property bar.

Defining Outline Width from the Outline Flyout

The quickest way to assign an outline width to a selected object (or objects) is to click on the Outline tool in the toolbox and choose from one of the preset widths. The options are ¹/4 point, ¹/2 point, 2 points, 8 points, 16 points, or 24 points (the widest).

6.1: Assign an 8-Point Outline to a Rectangle

1. Draw a rectangle.
2. Click on the Pick tool. The rectangle is still selected.
3. Click on the Outline tool, and click on the 8 point line--the one I'm selecting in Figure 6.3.

Figure 6.3.

When you assign line widths from the Outline flyout, the line width is indicated in the status bar.

Defining Outline Options with the Pen Rollup

The Pen rollup is a bit of a holdover from older versions of CorelDRAW, but it still has advantages. In Figure 6.4, I'm selecting the Pen rollup from the Outline tool flyout. The rollup is over on the right side of the screen in Figure 6.4.

One advantage of the Outline rollup is that you can tack it onto the Drawing area so that it's always available. (For more information about working with rollups, see Hour 4, "Controlling the CorelDRAW Environment.") The Pen rollup enables you to assign line width, starting and ending arrows, line style, and line color. That's quite a bit.

Let's explore assigning these various options by starting with an oval transformed into an arc. The following steps add an arrow to the end of that arc, transform it into a red, dashed line, and make it about 7 points thick.

Figure 6.4.

Selecting the Outline rollup from the Outline Tool flyout.

6.2: Assigning Outline Options with the Pen Rollup

1. Open a new document in CorelDRAW and create an arc. (If you don't remember how to create an arc, refer back to the section "Editing Objects" in Hour 1.)
2. After you create the arc, open the Pen rollup. Figure 6.5 the pen rollup.
3. Click on the Outline Color drop-down list in the Pen rollup and select red, as shown in Figure 6.6.

Figure 6.5.

The Pen rollup.

4. Pull down the Line Style drop-down menu, and choose the dashed line (see Figure 6.7).
5. Pull down the End Arrow Style drop-down menu, and assign an arrow of your choice to the end of the line as I have in Figure 6.8.

Figure 6.6.

Turning the arc red.

Figure 6.7.

Changing the line style to dashes.

6. Finally, click on the up arrow in the thickness area of the Pen rollup, until the line width is 7.2 points, as shown in Figure 6.9.
7. When you have finished defining the outline properties in the Pen rollup, click on the Apply button.

Figure 6.8.

Adding an arrow to the end of the line.

Figure 6.9.

Defining outline thickness in the Pen rollup.

You should now have an arc similar to the one on the bottom of Figure 9.10.

One of the cool things about working with the Pen rollup on your screen is that after you define settings, you can apply them to any selected object(s). For example, in Figure 6.10, I tweaked the outline we just defined by getting rid of the end line, and then I applied it to the lion.

Figure 6.10.

Applying the settings in the Pen rollup to a lion.

Just A Minute: Because the lion is a closed curve, he doesn't actually have a beginning or end, and we cannot apply an arrow to his outline even if we want to. You'll explore closed and open curves in more detail in the next hour in the section "Open and Closed Curves."

The Outline Pen Dialog Box

To define outline details you never dreamed existed, use the Outline Pen dialog box. You can open the Outline Pen dialog box by clicking on the Edit button in the Pen rollup, or by choosing the dialog box from the Outline tool flyout (it is the first tool in flyout). In Figure 6.11, I am selecting the Outline Pen dialog box.

Figure 6.11.

Choosing the Outline Pen dialog box from the Pen flyout.

Just A Minute: As an alternative, you can right-click on an object and choose Properties from the shortcut menu. When you do, yet another Object Properties dialog box appears. Select the Outline tab. This dialog box is a stripped down version of the Outline Pen dialog box. The larger Outline Pen Property Box is shown in Figure 6.12. It has all the features in the Outline tab of the Object Properties dialog box. After you explore the features in the larger Outline Pen dialog box, you can select some of those same features in the Object Properties dialog box.

Figure 6.12.

The Outline Pen dialog box.

The Outline Pen dialog box repeats some of the features you explored in the Pen rollup, but in some cases in more detail. In Figure 6.13, I've defined outline width in points to an insanely detailed four decimal places.

Figure 6.13.

Microdefining line width.

You also get tremendous control over dashed and dotted lines in the Outline Pen dialog box. By clicking on the Edit Style button, beneath the Style drop-down menu in the dialog box, you open the Edit Line Style dialog box. Here you pull on the I-beam cursor to define the number of squares in your pattern and then click on white squares to turn them colored. In Figure 6.14, I have defined a dashed line style with eight squares, five of them darkened.

Figure 6.14.

Defining a customized dashed line.

After you define a custom line style, click on the Add button in the Edit Line Style dialog box to add that custom style to the list of available line styles.

CAUTION: If you click on the Replace button in the Edit Line Style dialog box, you exit the dialog box and apply the defined line style to any selected object(s).

The Arrows section of the Outline Pen dialog box doesn't do much that you didn't just explore in the Pen rollup. The Corners area of the dialog box lets you assign a couple variations of rounded corners, which you'll learn more about in Hour 10, "Working with Shapes and Curves." The Line Caps section of the dialog box defines the appearance of the ends of lines. The options are Square Line Caps, Rounded Line Caps, or Extended Square Line Caps. In Figure 6.15, I have assigned (from left to right) square, rounded, and extended square line caps to the three arc ends, and rounded corners to the rectangle.

Figure 6.15.

The three Line Cap options provide subtle control over line appearance, from extended squares to rounded line ends.

CAUTION: Adding line caps extends the length of lines. If you attach Line Cap options to dashed lines, you extend those lines and might ruin your dashes by filling in the spaces between them.

The Outline Pen dialog box also lets you define Calligraphy styles for outlines. In the enhanced lion that Paul created for this lesson, he defined the Calligraphy Stretch spin box at 50% and the Angle at 45 degrees. You can try that yourself on the lion in the Animal1 font set, and see Paul's results by looking back at Figure 6.2 near the beginning of this hour.

Defining Default Outlines

You can set default outline attributes by defining outline properties in the Outline Pen dialog box with no object selected. When you do, the Outline Pen dialog box (shown in Figure 6.16) presents you with three check boxes. These check boxes define what kinds of objects will be subjected to the outline you define. If you choose all three, as I am in Figure 6.16, then the outline attributes you assign in the dialog box will apply to the outlines of every object you draw.

Figure 6.16.

Choosing objects to which you will apply custom-defined default outline attributes.

Are custom default outline settings useful? Probably not for artistic and almost certainly not for paragraph text (you'll explore paragraph text in Hour 8, "Drawing and Editing Freehand Curves," and then you can decide for yourself). However, if you have an ornate, unique custom outline you want to apply to many objects, it is worth it to define a custom outline. When defined, custom outline defaults apply only to the drawing in which they were created.

CAUTION: One potential source of chaos is if you accidentally redefine outline defaults. It's easy to do. If you open the Outline Pen dialog box and define line attributes with no line selected, those attributes become the default settings for lines.

Summary

Outlines can be any thickness or color. You can define outline properties for any object in CorelDRAW 8. Outlines can be assigned from defined styles or created by customizing an outline style.

Workshop

In this workshop, you enhance the magazine cover you created in previous lessons by adding outlines to the objects. To begin, open the document you worked on in the previous three lessons.

1. Modify the outline for the camera in the background by defining an outline width of 2 points.
2. Assign a dashed line outline style to the selected line.
3. Experiment with Nib Shape in the Outline Pen dialog box. Define a Nib Shape set to 45 degrees, with a Calligraphy Stretch setting at 100%. These settings define the shape of the dashes in your dashed line.
4. Define a dark outline (you can choose Other from the color drop-down menu and pick Pantone 235 CV) for the lion with a width of 9 points.
5. Set a dashed line (11th selection on Style), and select Behind Fill.
6. Save the changes to your illustration.

Feel free to experiment with additional outline properties.

Quiz

1. How do you define a default outline?
2. How do you define an outline width to four decimal places?
3. Name five attributes that you can assign to an outline.
4. Does an object need an outline to be visible?

Quiz Answers

1. Define an outline with no object(s) selected.
2. Open the Outline Pen dialog box. In the Width spin box, you can type a width setting with four decimal places (or more).
3. You can assign outline color, thickness, style, corners, and arrows.
4. No. Objects with fills can be seen, even if they do not have an outline. However, objects with no fill or outline will not print and are not visible unless they are selected, or in Wireframe view.

Teach Yourself CorelDRAW 8 in 24 Hours

Hour 6 Defining Outlines