Coreldraw Technical Suite Tutorial - Importing 3d models for technical illustration

CorelDRAW Technical Suite lets you add 3D models as 2D vector graphics to your illustrations. Before importing a graphic into Corel DESIGNER, you must first open it with XVL Studio 3D Corel Edition, the 3D visualization application in the Technical Suite. After you open the 3D image, you can preview it from different angles. For example, you can specify parallel or perspective projected views. You can also change the position, orientation, and size of a 3D model and you can create cross-sections. When you are satisfied with the view of the 3D model in XVL Studio 3D Corel Edition, you can import it as a 2D vector illustration into the active Corel DESIGNER drawing or save it for later use. There are two options available for importing a 3D drawing into Corel DESIGNER. From within Corel DESIGNER we can choose the 3D Import option from the File menu. Or, we can launch XVL Studio 3D Corel Edition directly from the Start menu or the Start Screen in Windows 8. The 3D-authoring software that is included in CorelDRAW Technical Suite supports polygon 3D models and lets you import files of the following 3D file types including DWG - DXF (the AutoCAD Drawing Interchange Format ) 3DS - OBJ - STL Universal 3D (U3D) - VRML - and XVL If however, you wish to work with native CAD file formats and have access to more advanced features, for example 3D measurement tools, advanced disassembly creation and 3D animation capabilities etc. then you could upgrade the 3D visualization application to XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition which supports additional native 3D CAD and advanced 3D exchange file formats. Here we have upgraded the XVL Studio 3D to the CAD edition and if we click on the File > Open command, you can see, it offers additional support for native 3D CAD systems' formats, including: CATIA - Autodesk Inventor - PTC Creo (formerlyPro/ENGINEER) NX - Solidworks - Solid Edge and more. And, you can repurpose supplier CAD models easily thanks to support for IGES, STEP, JT and other commonly used 3D CAD exchange file formats. XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition is an add-on that requires additional purchase. For more information and a list of comparative features for both versions of XVL 3D Studio, please visit the CorelDRAW Technical Suite website. Now that we have opened our file, we are going to start by taking a look at the basic viewing tools. If not already open, you can open the View and Operation toolbars by clicking on: View > Toolbar > View or View > Toolbar > Operation To pan through a drawing, click either on the Pan tool, or press the shortcut-key 'Z' to temporarily switch to the Pan tool from your current tool. To rotate the view click on either the Examine tool or use the shortcut-key 'X'. To zoom in or out, click on the Zoom icon or use the shortcut-key 'C' To zoom in or out, click on the Zoom icon or use the shortcut-key 'C' while dragging the mouse up or down. To zoom in to a specific area, use the Zoom Area tool or the shortcut-key 'V'. And to fit the entire drawing into the workspace, click on the 'Fit' icon. You can also apply preset views from the View toolbar. Orthographic views such as Front, Back, Right, Left, Top and Bottom, or isometric views such as Right-Top-Back (Iso View 1) or Left-Top-Front (Iso View 3). We can also access these through the following commands: View menu > View direction To view at a specific angle (other than the default isometric 30°), go to the View menu > View direction and click on the 'Specify' command and 'Set Direction' tab. To select individual parts use either the Select Part tool, or click on the part in the Assembly tree. You can also use the Assembly tree for showing and hiding specific parts. In addition, by right-clicking on a part in the Assembly tree you can choose to 'Display the selected element' only. And to show all parts, right-click and choose Display All. Finally, lets take a quick look at the display modes. The Display toolbar offers us the following display modes. We can view the drawing as shaded objects, which is what we have here. We can view the hidden lines or view the drawing as an illustration. The XVL Studio 3D CAD edition also allows you to go into wireframe mode. After we have defined the view that we would like to import into Corel DESIGNER, we are next going to create a snapshot. Now you might think that a snapshot is just a photographic image of the current view, but it is actually much more than that. A snapshot captures the entire 3D model including the 3D view, part positions and the display settings. Applying a snapshot restores the entire 3D model to its saved state and is therefore really useful for saving the display settings for later use. We are now going to use the Structure panel and the Snapshot tab to create a snapshot. Click on the 'Add snapshot' icon to create a snapshot to capture the current 3D state of the drawing. We are now going to change the viewpoint and move some parts. Now create a new snapshot to capture the new state of the 3D model. To restore the previous view, select the snapshot, right-click and choose 'Apply all'. This might be a good time to save our file in the native XVL format. Saving a 3D file as an XVL file maintains all settings, all the stored snapshots etc. for later use. To save a file in the XVL format: Click on File > Save As... and choose the .XVL format Specify the file name. Then click "Save" to save the file. Another view that is sometimes required for creating technical documentation is a cross-section view. Click Evaluation > Cross-section > New Cross-section and give the new cross-section a name. Now use the manipulator to change the position of the cutting plane. Click Add, then Close. Click again on New Cross-section. Try clicking on the icon for creating a multi-plane cut. In this case we will be creating a quarter cut. Finally, we can select an individual part from the Assembly tree and create a cross-section that only cuts through this particular part. Click Add, then Close. Now we can choose a cross-section from the list. Select 'Display Cross-section' to view it. Select 'Hide Cross-section' to display the whole model again. We are finally ready to send our 3D model to Corel DESIGNER. Go to File > Send to Corel DESIGNER I'm just going to leave the settings as they are for the moment, and click on 'Send'. In Corel DESIGNER I am also going to leave the 'Import SVG file' settings at 'Automatic' and click OK. Lets repeat this step now using the XVL 3D CAD Corel Edition where we have much greater flexibility when it comes to adjusting the advanced settings. I am going to start here by adjusting the line weights and saving these settings as a profile. Applying a thicker line weight to the 'Silhouette Line' will result in a more graphic representation, also known as thick-thin lining. At this point we can also check the box 'Fill selected parts' in the Style 2 tab. This will result in the vector illustration including color-filled components which match the material color as is displayed in XVL Studio 3D CAD. Alternatively, you can also include a bitmap rendering as an underlay in the vector illustration. That will add the photorealistic rendering as you can see in XVL Studio, underneath the line drawing to generate a hybrid vector-bitmap view. Now in Corel DESIGNER let's first take a look at the structure and layering of our illustration in the Object Manager docker. The 'Group of 1 objects' can be deleted as this represents only the page frame of the specified view in XVL Studio. We can also select specific objects here if for example, we would like to change the fill color of the objects. If we expand the "_Root" group we can see that the object structure in the Object Manager matches the original 3D assembly structure in XVL Studio and parts can be selected and modified individually. We can also send our 3D model to Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Before actually sending the file to PHOTO-PAINT however, I am first going to go into the Display Options and change the view to Perspective. Perhaps we also want to use 'green-screen' technology to create an image with a fixed-color background that we can then 'knock-out' in Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Click on the 'Display Color' tab Remove the check from 'Graded Background' if active And change the background color to green. And finally, we go to the Axis and Grid tab and remove the check from 'Current'. This will remove the axis symbol from the final bitmap. Click OK. Now click on File > Send to Corel PHOTO-PAINT. And here we have our camera, imported into Corel PHOTO-PAINT and in this case, I have placed this image on top of another background. All I need to do now is to simply select the green using my Magic Wand mask tool to remove the green background. This rounds up our tutorial on importing 3D models from XVL Studio 3D into Corel DESIGNER and Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Please join us for our next CorelDRAW Technical Suite tutorial, Embedding 3D Models in a documentation page in Corel DESIGNER.