CorelDRAW X5 : The X5 Test Drive - Welding an Edge to a Typed Character, A Brief Excursion into Gradient Fills

You can substitute any available font you like in the following steps, but if you own Futura XBlk BT—the filename is tt0148m_.ttf and it’s in the Fonts folder on the CorelDRAW installation DVD—install it if you haven’t done so already. It’s a very good workaday typeface with scores of design uses, because it’s very plain and extremely bold, ideal for adding a few gear notches without ruining its legibility.

Drag and drop a copy of the gear for future use; with the Pick tool, drag the gear off the page, but before releasing the mouse button, tap the right button to leave a duplicate of the gear.

Zoom into the original gear shape, choose the Text tool, and then click an insertion point directly over the gear, hold SHIFT, and type D.

Choose the Pick tool, and then with the character still selected, choose Futura XBlk BT from the Font list drop-down on the property bar. You can also highlight “24 pt” to the right of the font name and then type 300 in the Font size box. There are approximately 72 points to an inch in typesetting, so a ballpark estimate of the character’s size makes it approximately the size of the gear. Click over the No Fill color well on the Color Palette to remove the fill of the character, and then right-click over the black color well to give the character a black outline. Now you can see both objects to reposition the “D”.

With the Pick tool, move the “D” so that its right side aligns to the gear. If necessary, hold SHIFT and then drag a selection handle away from or toward the center of the “D” to proportionately enlarge or shrink the “D” so that its right curve lies just a fraction outside of the gear.

Choose the Pen tool from the pen group on the toolbox; drag on the icon of the current tool to access any other tool in the nested group. Click points around the left side of the gear to make an object, shown next, that surrounds the left side of the gear, encompassing the hole in the character “D”. You’re going to remove these areas using this object and the Trim operation.

With the Pick tool, select the shape first, and then select the gear, holding SHIFT and clicking one object at a time. On the property bar, click the Trim icon.

By default, the shape that trims the bottom shape remains in the document, but it’s now unnecessary. Select it and then press CTRL+X to delete it.

Select both objects by marquee-dragging with the Pick tool, and then click the Weld icon on the property bar.

Choose the Interactive Fill tool from the toolbox.

Click the “D” gear shape to select it, and then click-drag up and to the right (drag toward about 2 o’clock on the gear shape) and release the mouse button. By default, the “To” color of the Linear fountain fill is the place where you released the mouse. You work “From” your click-drag start point “To” your destination within the object.

Let’s say you’re not thrilled with the From and To colors in the fountain fill. To change a color, while the Interactive Fill tool is still selected and you can still see the control handles for the fill above the gear drawing, click the tiny From color marker—it’s marked with the color you chose in the previous tutorial. Now the color is highlighted and available for editing. Click a light gray color well on the Color Palette. Then click the To color marker and click a medium to dark gray color well on the Color Palette.

Now let’s say that the color transition between From and To in the fountain fill isn’t dramatic enough, but you do like the two colors. Adjust the midpoint of the fill by dragging on the midpoint control, shown in Figure 1. You drag it toward the From color marker to emphasize the To color in the fill, and vice versa.

To quickly add the same sort of fill to the “G” gear, choose the Attributes Eyedropper tool from the toolbox. Click over the D gear to sample its properties, and then click over the G gear to apply the sampled properties, as shown next—occasionally, you luck out in Life, and some things are simple... Press CTRL+S to save your work up to this point. In fact, just make it a practice to save your work every 10 minutes or so; it’s only two keystrokes.