The duplicate feature of Corel Draw 2019 is a powerful tool to allow you to align and distribute elements in your artwork in an fast and efficient way.
This feature is useful if you have repeated graphics, logos or text throughout your design. You can then duplicate the graphic at a specific offset to fill your work area. This tool can work in conjunction with print merge jobs; for more information about print merge, you can Click Here. The tool can also be used to create interesting artwork using repeated patterns. Lastly this feature can be used to create jigs to hold a product for marking.
The way to use this feature is to create some sort of artwork that you would like to duplicate, then decide on what X and Y offset you would like to use when duplicating.
I have imported my artwork into Corel Draw 2019, in order to make a how to laser coaster. I would like to duplicate it so that there is even spacing between the coasters. My coaster is 100 x 100 mm in size, which means we need to duplicate the first coaster at least 100mm in either X or Y direction in order to not overlap the artwork.
For example, if I was to duplicate this coaster in the X direction by 100mm, here is the result. The right edge of the first coaster shares its border with the left side of the duplicated part.
With that knowledge, we can now workout what X or Y offset we need to be able to perfectly space out our artwork.
I would like to have a 5mm gap between my coasters, so therefore my duplication offset will need to be set to 105mm. 100mm so that the artwork is duplicated with a shared border, then an additional 5mm for the gap that I would like between my parts.
So, you may be asking, “How do I actually do it?”… here’s how.
There are two main ways of duplicating a part.
Option 1 is to use the toolbar quick settings as shown in the image above. You can specify an X offset, a Y offset or a combination of both offsets to define the duplication settings. When changing this option, you must be sure to have nothing selected before you are able to change these settings.
Once you have changed the X or Y offset to what you like, you must then press CTRL + D to duplicate the selected part. When you do this, the result will look like this.
Please note the direction of the duplication is dictate by which axis you are duplicating on and also if the number is positive or negative. Here is a quick reminder of the X and Y axis, as well as which direction is positive and negative in each axis.
In the case above, I used a +105mm offset in the X axis, therefore the duplicated part was duplicated 105mm to the right of the original. Using a -105mm in the X axis would therefore result in a duplication of the original part, but to the left of the original. Same thing applies for the Y axis. A positive number will duplicated the part above the original and a negative number will duplicated below the original.
This same effect, can be achieved by pressing CTRL + Shift + D. This will bring up the Step and Repeat function, in which you can then duplicate the selected graphic, the same way as described previously.
The benefit of using Step and Repeat, is that you can specify how many copies of the artwork you would like. This can save some time especially if you need hundreds of copies of the same part.
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That’s it for now
Catch ya next time!
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