Teach Yourself
CorelDRAW 8 in 24 Hours
You can add, delete, and navigate between pages in CorelDRAW 8. This is useful for creating multipage brochures or newsletters, or working with longer documents that you want to publish with CorelDRAW.
The Object Manager Docker window works as an organizing tool to help you arrange and edit objects in complex illustrations. Even at this point, in working with one page, you might have noticed that keeping track of the wide variety of objects you create in an illustration can get crazy. Some of the illustrations our resident artist Paul designs involve hundreds of objects. You can often find objects more easily using Wireframe view than you can in Normal view, but when you have stacked a dozen objects on top of each other, even Wireframe view isn't much help in sorting through or finding objects.
With CorelDRAW 8, Corel has beefed up the Object Manager. If you're used to the old Layers rollup in earlier versions of CorelDRAW, it's gone. But that's okay because all its features have been incorporated into the new and improved Object Manager. The Object Manager makes it easy to find objects. You can even assign unique names to each object you create, such as "Dave's big ol' red rectangle" or something more creative.
Finally, in this hour you'll explore the process of creating a master page using the Object Manager. Objects on a master page appear on every page in your drawing. This is handy, for example, if you want to place a logo or text such as "Zoo News" on every page in your drawing.
You can add pages to your publication, delete them, and even name them. After you create several pages, you can navigate between them using the navigation bar and tabs at the bottom of the Drawing window (just above the status bar).
To Add pages, select Layout | Insert Page from the menu bar. You'll see the Insert Page dialog box, shown in Figure 16.1. This dialog box lets you define how many pages you want to insert and whether you want those pages before or after the current page.
You can insert pages before or after the current (selected) page.
Just A Minute: You can view all four Drawing window tabs at once by dragging on the divider between the page tabs and the scrollbar. In Figure 16.2, I'm enlarging the page tabs area so I can see all four tabs.
You can resize the area dedicated to page tabs.
You can name pages.
After you create a couple different pages, you can navigate between them by clicking on a page tab or by using the arrow navigation buttons to the left of the page tabs. These arrows differ depending on how many pages are in your publication, and which page you have selected. But the ones on the left move you to the front of the publication, and the ones on the right move you toward the end. If two arrows point in one direction, the one on the outside takes you to the beginning or end of the publication.
The Object Manager enables you to navigate from one page to another and from one object to another. You view the Object Manager Docker window by selecting Layout | Object Manager from the menu bar.
The Object Manager has three icons on top, as shown in Figure 16.4.
The three icons on top of the Object Manager let you add layers, control how much you see about each page, and control your editing.
For now, just be aware of these three icons, and refer back to Figure 16.4 if I ask you to click on one of them.
The Object Manager displays all the pages you have created and an extra page as well called the Master Page. Objects on the Master Page apply to all pages in your publication.
You can have more than one layer on a page. Why would you want to do that? There are a number of uses for multilayered pages:
The examples I just listed illustrate the three properties on every layer that you can control: View/Not View, Print/Not Print, and Edit/Not Edit. These properties are set by selecting or unselecting the Eyeball (View/Not View), Printer (Print/Not Print), and Pencil (Edit/Not Editable) icons next to each layer.
Page display can be shrunk so only the Page title appears in the Object Manager.
Creating a new, nonprinting layer.
Naming an object in the Object Manager.
Combining a printing layer with a nonprinting layer on the same page.
Any layer can be hidden onscreen or declared off-limits to editing.
Another handy thing you can do with the Object Manager is select objects in cluttered, hard-to-edit illustrations. In Figure 16.10, I right-clicked on an ellipse in the Object Manager (not the Drawing window), and I'm choosing delete from the shortcut menu to cut it. This is easier than clicking over and over again trying to find that object in the Drawing window.
Selecting objects is often easier in the Object Manager than in the Drawing window.
Objects on Master Layers appear on every page. The default Master Layer generated with each new drawing includes nonprinting Master Guides, Master Grid, and Desktop Layers. These layers simply support the CorelDRAW Drawing window. The Desktop Layer is the area outside the Drawing page in the Drawing window, and normally it does not print.
You can also include printing objects on Master Layers. The best way to do this is to create a new layer on one of your pages and define it as a Master Layer. Place objects on that layer that you want to print on each page. Master Layers are defined by right-clicking on any existing layer and choosing Master Layer from the shortcut menu.
Creating a new layer that will be a Master Layer.
Just A Minute: Because CorelDRAW already includes a Master Page, I'm avoiding calling my new layer Master Page to avoid confusion.
Because the Master Layer text is visible (and will print) on both pages, you should see it in the same place on both the Cover and the Back Page of your drawing.
You can edit the Master Layer text from any layer on any page. So if the Master Layer text is not located right, you can simply move it while you edit your regular pages. If you want to restrict yourself from editing the Master Layer while you're working on other layers, click on the Edit Across Layers icon on top of the Object Manager (the icon on the right). With Edit Across Layers deselected, you can edit only the layer that you have currently selected in the Object Manager.
Master Layer objects will appear on every page.
By adding more than one page to your drawing, you can use CorelDRAW as a desktop publishing tool to design publications. You can easily navigate from one page to another or rename pages.
The Object Manager Docker window is a powerful way to locate and work with objects in your drawing. It's useful to find objects in crowded illustrations. The Object Manager can also be used to create layers and assign layer properties. Those properties can include nonprinting layers, layers that cannot be edited, or layers that are not visible on the screen.
In this workshop, you practice working with multiple pages and layers. You will create a two-page flyer, with a nonprinting layer and a Master Layer.
Master Layer text will appear on all pages.
Master Layer text shows up on the front page of the newsletter.
© Copyright, Macmillan Computer Publishing. All rights reserved.
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