CorelDraw - Setting Up and Tips

Setting the line width to "hairline" tells the laser to cut the line. We normally use red for this, but other colours can be used for cutting (these are black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, orange). Do NOT use any other colour in your drawing as the laser cutting software will interpret it as a shade of black and possibly cut a line. Rastering can also use the same colours but do not use the same colour for cutting as for rastering. Note that for other drawing software set the minimum line thickness in place of hairline (in CAD packages this is usually 0.01).

To raster, use lines thicker than hairline, or shapes with a fill. This (along with laser speed) allows control of the depth of engraving.

So, to cut holes please use a red hairline circle. To engrave use a black fill, and to do an outer cut please use a hairline red outline around the fill. Shades of black can be used to define raster depth but but the rastering will be "pixilated" like a newspaper photograph and might not produde the effect desired.

Please set page size to 400mm x 300mm, and allow a minimum 5mm space around the outer edge of your drawing to allow for holding down your materials.

Often it is preferable cut out the windows before cutting out the side or cut out detail parts placed within other cut-outs before cutting out the windows. You can do this by using the colours above in this order (viz: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, orange) - black lines will be cut before red, red before green, etc. Either you define the cutting order yourself in the drawing or we can do it (you may be charged depending on complexity).

Be careful to make sure that you have only ONE line in a drawing to be cut and not more than one on top of each other. This is an easy mistake to make in CorelDraw particularly when using the "+" sign to duplicate an object. If you have more than one line the laser will cut each duplicated line over the top of the other.