Corel Alignment Tip Needed

[Steve Clarkson]

Is there an easy way to get the boxes on the left aligned like the ones on the right......easily?

Here is how I did it......I selected the first column and hit "L' to left align them, then positioned them at (0,0), then started at the second one down and changed the position to (0,-.125), took the third one and moved it to (0,-.25), etc etc. Then I selected the second column and hit "L", moved it to (2.125.0) and repeated what I did on the first column.

Is there an easier way to get boxes to touch?


Boxes.jpg

[Abe Levinson]

If I'm understanding you correctly, the best way to do this type of thing in Corel is the Step and Repeat function. You just make one box. Go to windows drop down menu and select dockers and click on step and repeat. This will open up all your options which will allow you to make a row across first, letting you choose quantity, space between objects, or offset between objects. After that, you choose how many columns you want with the same options. With step and repeat you can create perfectly spaced objects in unlimited numbers in a matter of seconds. Depending on which version of Corel you are using you might have to select it under the edit menu rather than dockers, but dockers will have to be open regardless in order for you to navigate your options.

[Ross Moshinsky]

There is an unconventional way of doing this. I do it to achieve the 1/8" spacing between letters in ADA Signs. Basically what you want to do is take your item and copy and paste on place. Then move the item down to the LAST position using the move tool. Then paste the "filler" items in between. Using the equal spacing align tool, you should be able to get everything to line up the way it should.

I agree that a step and repeat function or print merge would be a smarter way to do things but sometimes it's good to know the unconventional way.

[Mark Sipes]

Why not just create a 2 x 10 paper graph grid the size of the assembled boxes and then ungroup so you can center the numbers in the individual boxes ... convert to red lines .0003 and bam vector cut lines...


or if you have a list of text numbers.. create 1 box and merge print the numbers and assemble the print files in the laser software to cut them all out.......

[Rodne Gold]

You can enable the snap to objects under view and when moving the text and boxes they will snap together. May be faster , maybe not

[Steve Clarkson]

All good ideas......thanks. But I should have mentioned a few things.....first, it was an existing file rather than a file that I am creating, so the step and repeat wouldn't be the solution since the boxes are already made. The grid isn't a bad idea, but not all of the boxes are the exact same size. And I do have Snap to Objects enabled, but that only seems to work when centering two objects......maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't get two "edges" to snap together. I guess I was hoping that there was a Corel shortcut for aligning one box directly under another one, kind of like there are hotkeys for Center align (C), Left align (L) and Right align (R).......maybe if Corel ever invites me back to be a beta tester on X7 I can recommend a Top align (T) and Bottom (B) align!

[Glen Monaghan]

You should be able to grab the upper left corner of the second box and, using snap to get perfect alignment, quickly drop it at the lower left corner of the first box. Repeat with each subsequent box down the column. Repeat that process for the second column, and then select the entire second column, grab its upper left hand corner, and snap to the 1st column's upper right hand corner.

-Glen

[Larry Bratton]

All good ideas......thanks. But I should have mentioned a few things.....first, it was an existing file rather than a file that I am creating, so the step and repeat wouldn't be the solution since the boxes are already made. The grid isn't a bad idea, but not all of the boxes are the exact same size. And I do have Snap to Objects enabled, but that only seems to work when centering two objects......maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't get two "edges" to snap together. I guess I was hoping that there was a Corel shortcut for aligning one box directly under another one, kind of like there are hotkeys for Center align (C), Left align (L) and Right align (R).......maybe if Corel ever invites me back to be a beta tester on X7 I can recommend a Top align (T) and Bottom (B) align!

Steve,
B and T already work to align Bottom and Top. Select two objects and hit B or T..try it.

[Rodne Gold]

You might not have the right snap mode enabled .. look for something like "snap to objects setup" - snap to node and select the nodes you wanna use etc. dont have Corel on this puter so cant check it.

[Mark Sipes]

Don't want to be argumentative but why would the boxes be different sizes... all are 4 digits.....unless this is not the real data to be aligned or I missed something in the first and second messages. even your aligned data looks to be the same size.. just confused.......some times it's faster to do it the best way you know than to force it .......

[Steve Clarkson]

Glen.......you nailed it......it worked perfectly! I was grabbing the middle of the first box, so it would only snap to the middle of the second box.....grabbing the top left worked perfectly (so I guess I didn't need to change anything Rodney, I just needed to learn how to do it correctly!).

Holy Larry, it never occurred to me to try T and B!!! But unfortunately it aligns the top or bottom of both......I needed it for the top of one to the bottom of the other........you think there is a letter for that?

Mark, yes, the boxes in the picture I posted were all the exact size......but the file the customer sent has about 600 boxes total and not all of them are the same size.....guess I should have mentioned that too.

Thanks again everyone.......hopefully this little tutorial helped a few other people too.

[Larry Bratton]

Steve,
Unfortunately not. What we need is a command that will Flush to Objects or something like that. That's good info on the snaps though, I didn't know that and am sure it will be useful. Happy Fourth!