Corel: how to remove duplicate curves/lines globally in a document?

[Amy Shelton]

Howdy! I'm a long time lurker, and I have learned so much from you folks! (And yes, you can tell by my accent, I'm from Tennessee, I gave it away.) Most of the questions I've had, I have been able to search the archives and find answers.

This time, however, I am stumped. Maybe I don't know the right keywords.

A customer brought me some DXF plans, five files' worth. He wants pricing on cutting it out of wood. The cutting part won't take long, but fixing the file will. I could see that there were multiple lines because some lines were thicker.

I wrote notes on the CDR attachments, but I'll explain here, too.

When I select one of the thicker lines and delete it, it's gone. So I knew there wasn't a second line below it. Then I tried Ctrl-K, to break apart the curve. Wow, some of the lines had 23 copies! So I would hold Ctrl, de-select one of the lines, then hit the Delete key to erase the other 22. This will take a lot of time to clean up like this.

Do you know of an easier way to remove these excess curves? I tried selecting several objects then breaking the curves apart, but it won't let me. I tried a macro, but I think some of the actions aren't able to translate to it.

I thought I would ask for your help, not only for me, but maybe someone reading this later can benefit.

I attached it as Ver 10 and 13. I engrave with a different computer, and I don't have the ULS color palette loaded on this one, so the colors may not be accurate.

Thanks a bunch!
Amy

[Mark Winlund]

Do you know of an easier way to remove these excess curves? I tried selecting several objects then breaking the curves apart, but it won't let me. I tried a macro, but I think some of the actions aren't able to translate to it.

Welcome to the world of Autocad. The problem is common, and is caused by Autocad, not Corel.The only way that I know of to correct it is to select the top curve and "nudge" it to the side, leaving the rest of the lines in place. Keep doing this until you have a complete drawing off to the side. You can then delete the image that you started with. Of course, you now have to join the end nodes together. I am informed that Corel now has an automated function to do this (join nodes) in Version 15, but I have not tried it myself.

Sometimes a different version of Autocad will not do this. Many programs will allow you to export different version of a "DFX" file for just this reason. If you customer generated the DXF from some other drawing program, maybe they can send you the drawing in some other format such as EPS or AI.

Mark

[Scott Challoner]

If they created the file, ask if they can convert everyting to a 0 width line before saving it as a .dxf. Another option is to have them print it to a .pdf. It will remain a vector file once you import it into Corel. I've had good luck with both of these techniques and i imagine a .eps will work fine too.
If you like, you can send me the dxf files and I can do either conversion for you.

I hope you can understand my Nortern accent der eh.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

if you have AutoCAD, running the OVERKILL command will remove duplicate objects.

Have you tried the smart fill tool to recreate the boundary you need to cut and erasing all of the other objects from the DXF?

[Mike Ireland]

When you import the file into CorelDraw make sure you use the DXF filter and click 'Auto Reduce Nodes'

[Gary Hair]

That particular file would be a couple of clicks to fix, others might not be so easy.

I would use smart fill and simply click inside the gear. The resulting object would be a single entity with multiple nodes. Delete the imported dxf objects and you are left with one object.

I use smart fill for a lot of things and this is a shining example of when it is a very powerful tool.

Gary

[Dan Hintz]

If the object can be considered extra nodes, select the entire thing and use the "Reduce Nodes" tool. I haven't played with redundant lines enough to know if it would be the same as redundant nodes... maybe if you joined objects?

[Amy Shelton]

This is neat how there are so many different solutions! (Is this similar to when there are 5 people in the room, there 6 different opinions?)

I tried the smart fill, but, uh, apparently I wasn't smart enough to do it. I guess it was in too many different pieces. When I combined it, there were some strange shapes added to the interior.

Mike Ireland's suggestion of clicking "Auto Reduce Nodes" when I was importing did the trick! I couldn't believe how simple it was. Thank you! You get the jelly doughnut award! (That's what my college professor would give out, lol)

After that worked, I didn't try any of the other suggestions, but I am interested to try them. Just glad I can put it off for now and get this done for him!

eh? Scott? I just ran your post through a Google translator, and understood yer talkin' perfectly!

Thanks, everyone!

[James Terry]

I have had similar trouble recently where there were stray curves underneath the solid line so the laser was dancing around doing a cut. I was able to select the entire object and close path with straight lines just to make sure it was solid. Then you can select the entire area/image again and then hold shift down and click on the object you want to keep to deselect it. Then what is left selected are the remaining objects to delete. When done, you can move the clean object aside to make sure nothing is left, then undo.

[Tony Lenkic]

I've had same issues with DXF. Than I asked customer to save/export the file in WMF format and it worked great.

[Kevin L. Waldron]

We draw with Turbocad and Autocad all the time for precision templates. The easiest way to make things work in a dxf prior to importing into Corel is to make all lines .001 in the cad program and make sure all lines are joined prior to export to a dxf file (polyline). For best results all lines need to snap to endpoints, intersections, etc or you may have tails on the end of a line and Corel often does strange things with these leftovers. If you can export in version 2000 Autocad ...... (cleaner simpler dxf file)...... it tends to work better. (Corel X5 has a few issue with dxf files and sometimes we have to go to X4 first and then bring into x5 if we need something in the newer version. We have reported the errors!)

Hope this helps.....I'm in Tennessee; guitartemplates.net for what we do with templates we make with Autocad that we sell........ we also use the laser for all our instruments in that we make parts with the laser from cad dxf files. waldroninstruments.com
Kevin Waldron

[George D Gabert]

If you export your files to DXF and open into AutoCad you can change all the lines into .000 width.

Then import DXF back into Corel.

A while back someone posted a visual basic script to "DeleteUnderlyingDups". Explode the import and then run script. This cleans up file nicely. I ran your file and deleted 836 lines.

If you PM me I can cycle file for you.

GDG

[rich shepard]

Had the same problem with Corel version 12 now that I have 14 I can open and cut the same files with no problems. Never did learn or like autocad.
rich