Front Minus Back OR Back Minus Front

[Tracey Bakewell]

I GIVE UP! I am trying to do something I think is VERY simple, but can't get it to work right.

I have merged together 3 shapes for my main item I will be cutting in spectrum lights. I now need to trim the shape with a circle to get it to fit perfectly in my medal.

I keep getting the sort of right result using front minus back and back minus front, but trim doesn't work.

Anyone care to take a stab at it? I should be left with the shape in the center of the circle with a few edges trimmed off in the shape of the outer circle. It's on Page 2 (page 1 is the me measuring every angle of the medal).

Thanks!
Tracey

PS: PLEASE tell me what you did!

[Alexander Stein]

Im not sure if I understood the question correctly...

but is this what you are looking for?

[George D Gabert]

I think it was saved as X4 so saved as X9

[Ruben Salcedo]

I'm not sure if I understand it right, I did not know what to do with the second smaller outed ring/circle and I did not see any reference to it in page 1, I hope these is what you were after, all I did is converted all shapes to curves and did exactly what you were doing after I combine the 3 center shapes I did a back minus front with the outer circle and the resulted shape of combine and that was it.

Ruben

[Tracey Bakewell]

Alexander, that's it!

Thank you!!!

What did you do to get the circle to go away but simply crop off the edges of the touching elements?

Thanks again!

Originally Posted by Alexander Stein

Im not sure if I understood the question correctly...

but is this what you are looking for?

[Tracey Bakewell]

Yea, I was getting the same result as you, I needed the actual circle to only be a cropping tool to trim off the edges it was touching of the shapes that were inside it.

Sorry, it was kind of hard to explain, thanks for trying!!! If you dowload Alex's file above, the one on the bottom left of the page is my desired result.

Thanks!
Tracey

Originally Posted by Ruben Salcedo

I'm not sure if I understand it right, I did not know what to do with the second smaller outed ring/circle and I did not see any reference to it in page 1, I hope these is what you were after, all I did is converted all shapes to curves and did exactly what you were doing after I combine the 3 center shapes I did a back minus front with the outer circle and the resulted shape of combine and that was it.

Ruben

[Martin Boekers]

Not knowing which part you want to save I left the circle around it, you can delete it if you like.

I used the intersect instead of front and back.

Hope this helps.


Marty

[Ruben Salcedo]

Ah, Ok, to get Alexander results you need to combine the odd shape result with the outer circle, then you just break apart the nodes that intersects with the edges that you want to remove, then just delete those nodes and rejoin the nodes where you break them before, like you said is hard to explain i hope you understand.


Ruben

[Gary Hair]

Originally Posted by Tracey Bakewell

PS: PLEASE tell me what you did!

Tracey,
I use smartfill a LOT and this is a perfect example of when it shines! Click on the smartfill icon and click inside the inner shape. The resulting object is exactly what you wanted - two clicks and it's created. Then all you have to do is move it, select no fill and you are done!

I have created some pretty complex objects with smart fill, you would be amazed at how easy it makes things.

I would suggest playing with it a bit and you'll probably find a lot of uses for it.

Gary

[Ruben Salcedo]

Yes as Gary says, I totally forgot about it, it is very simple to do it that way, but since Martin mention the intersection I got curios and I did it too, I learn something new too , with the intersection here is how I do it, I select the odd shape and the outer circle then "Intersect" and what this does is it creates another curve and place it in the meddle of the previous two, this is the shape you want, so I just delete the top and bottom curves... and is done.


Ruben

[Alexander Stein]

So, unfortunately I am a rookie at Corel Draw but I have a feeling the "back minus front" is very similar to the "Minus Front" feature in Adobe Illustrator.

So I cannot tell you how to do it in CD but this is how I accomplished this problem in Illustrator..........

[Rodne Gold]

Its very easy - select the circle and then select the virtual segment delete tool and click on the areas outside the circle , they will be trimmed off. Delete the circle afterwards.
If you want the arcs to complete the pattern after trimming , select the inside shape and use the virtual segment delete tool to trim the circle bits you dont want

[Tony Lenkic]

I use Gary's approach quite offten and it works great. Smart fill tool, two clicks and is done.
This can easily be done by selecting circle first hold down ctrl key to select inner part then go to "INTERSECT" not front minus back.

[Tracey Bakewell]

WOW! A lot of great information here. I turned my back on this to get the job done and came back, this is great! Thanks everyone!!!

Sincerely,
Tracey

Originally Posted by Gary Hair

Tracey,
I use smartfill a LOT and this is a perfect example of when it shines! Click on the smartfill icon and click inside the inner shape. The resulting object is exactly what you wanted - two clicks and it's created. Then all you have to do is move it, select no fill and you are done!

I have created some pretty complex objects with smart fill, you would be amazed at how easy it makes things.

I would suggest playing with it a bit and you'll probably find a lot of uses for it.

Gary