In this tutorial you will learn how and when to use the Corel Draw – Virtual Segment Delete Tool. This tool is used when you need to delete specific sections of your artwork.
Below you will see how this tool can be used and why it is an important tool, that promises to increase your productivity and lower artwork design time.
There are other tools in Corel Draw’s arsenal that will do a similar process to the Virtual Segment Delete Tool. But these tools do require quite a bit of effort to get right and are not as precise as the Virtual Segment Delete Tool.
The Virtual Segment Delete Tool can be used in a few select situations which will really increase your productivity by lowering your design time; these are listed below.
Overlapping shapes can be cut to allow the shape to become a single entity. Here you can see there is a rectangle with a circle overlapping one of the corners.
The Virtual Segment Delete Tool is nested in a menu, under the tool bar strip. You can select the Virtual Segment Delete Tool by left clicking and holding the third option from the top of the tool bar as shown above. A new menu will appear and you can now select the tool.
With the tool selected, you can now click and drag, which will result in a boundary box displaying on the screen. Any lines which intersect this box will be deleted.
Once you release the mouse, the lines will be deleted, leaving you with this shape.
NOTE: After using the Virtual Segment Delete Tool, the lines will not be connected. If you need this shape to be a single entity, please use the Smart Fill Tool.
Another situation that you may need to use the Virtual Segment Delete Tool in is when editing vectorized text. To learn how to vectorize text, please refer to the previous post, or Click Here.
When laser cutting the letter ‘A’, the middle of the letter will fall out due to it not being connected to anything. If you would like to keep this section of the letter, you must connect it with the material around it. The fastest way to do this is to create cut lines as shown above. This will create a little tab which will keep the middle of the letter connected, while the rest falls away.
Here you can see the result of the tool. All that as needed, is to create a boundary box around any of the intersecting lines and delete them to create a tab.
The last situation I will cover in this tutorial is creating floating text. Here you can see I have created some Vectorized Text, again to learn how to do this Click Here.
After creating the text I created a box which intersects a small portion of the bottom of the letters.
And this is the result of deleting any overlapping lines. We have a free standing line of text. With a bit more creativity, this could become a sign which can be hung on a kids room door, or a wedding present.
This tool allows you to work on your vector artworks, quickly and efficiently. With a little practise I’m sure it will greatly increase your productivity.
That’s all for now!
Catch ya next time!
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