Symbols and Imposition in CorelDRAW

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Symbols and Imposition

© 2003 by Foster D. Coburn III, All Rights Reserved.

When I first suggested doing this article, I got a resounding ho-hum as Symbols have been in CorelDRAW for many versions now. Yes, there has been a feature called Symbols for quite a few releases. Users upgrading to CorelDRAW 11 have searched for the old feature and have found it is now called Insert Character (Ctrl-F11). But we're going to talk about the new Symbols feature added in CorelDRAW 11. Once we have our file created, we'll then use the Imposition tools to show off one of CorelDRAW's secret weapons.

Hello, My Name Is

One of the many things that fall under my job description are hosting and teaching Boot Camps on CorelDRAW. Students come from all over the world to learn all about the software. Sure, we could give them a boring generic name tag, but we prefer to create a graphic "dog tag" for them to wear around their neck. As you can imagine on a name tag, most of the information is the same for everyone. Another group of information only changes with each class. Then there are the names that vary quite a bit.

For the repeating elements of the design, we're going to use the new symbols in CorelDRAW. The idea is that you create the artwork, convert it to a symbol and then drop as many copies into the artwork as possible. If you change one instance of the symbol, the change cascades to all other instances of the symbol.

Setting Up the Page

The page setup is where some users would get mixed up. While we are going to print info that fills an 8.5 x 11 page, we will use a much smaller page. The key here is that the smaller page will be imposed multiple times on the bigger printer page to get the final output we desire.

Since I wanted this project to be as easy as possible, I bought some Avery pre-cut business cards. All I'll need to do is print on the front and back of the cards and tear them apart. This makes the page setup in CorelDRAW even easier.

Select Layout | Page Setup.
On the upper right of the dialog box, click the Labels radio button.
In the Label Type list, I selected Avery Laser/Ink 5371 2 x 3.5 BusCr as that was the number on the box I bought. At this point, the dialog box should look similar to Figure 1. Note how the page snapshot shows ten cards on a single sheet of paper.

Once you click OK, notice that the page size is changed so that the page is 2 inches tall and 3.5 inches wide. While this may seem a bit odd if our goal is to print on a larger sheet, you'll soon see the power of imposition in action.

Creating the Common Side

On the back side of the cards, I wanted to include the Boot Camp logo. This part is the same for everyone. But if the version of software changes or we do another flavor of Boot Camp, the logo would be different. So rather than just sticking the logo on every page, I converted it to a Symbol.

Select all part of the logo.
Choose Edit | Symbol | New Symbol

That's it, it is pretty darned easy. Now you can open the Library Docker (see Figure 2) to see all the symbols in the current document. You'll note that there are several other symbols shown in the Library Docker that we'll use on the other side of the card.

For this particular exercise, the logo is only used one time in the document so there is no need to add instances of the symbol.

Adding the Variable Side

Again, symbols were used to provide as much of the "variable" side as possible. The top portion of the card contains the date of the Boot Camp. While this changes with each class, it is the same on every card. A symbol was made from the date information and placed on a page for every student in the class. As a sheet of business cards holds as many as ten students, we'll use ten instances of the symbol for this example.

Names of the students, their companies and cities are placed at the bottom of the card. This is all done manually since the classes are fairly small. If there were a larger number of names then the Print Merge feature might be useful. But it would be hard to use Print Merge and imposition in the same job (for that we'd need Name Drop Xpress). So that each card lines up correctly, a name was created on the first card and then copied to all other cards. Once it was in place, the names were edited to match the students in the class.

As a way to give the cards a bit more color and to indicate the country for each student, their country's flag is added. The classes are held in the US, but we commonly have students from Canada and have had students from as far away as South Africa. Each flag that might get used is also stored as a symbol so that it can easily be dropped onto a card. To make sure it drops into the correct location, guidelines are placed on three sides of the flag and it snaps right into place.

Printing the Cards

While things have been interesting so far, the printing is where the real excitement begins. Our file contains eleven pages, one for the common side and ten for the variable side. Our goal is to take those eleven pages and produce ten duplexed cards. Whew!

When we first select File | Print, we get the dialog box in Figure 3. In the Print range section, we need to specify which pages to print. Since Page 1 needs to repeat ten times, type it in ten times separated by commas. Then type the last set of pages separated by a dash. If there are other settings to change in the Print dialog, do this now. Once finished, click Print Preview.

Wow, note how the cards are already placed perfectly on the page. If you look at the bottom of the window (see Figures 4 and 5), you'll notice it lists "Signature 1" and "Signature 2". Each one contains all the information for the front and back of the page. As we're printing to a duplexing printer, the only thing left to do is press the printer icon on the top toolbar to get our finished cards. For those who don't have a duplexing printer, you can just run the paper through the printer twice.

In Closing

Somewhere over the years, CorelDRAW developed a bad reputation for its ability to print. Some of this was deserved, but much was the fault of the operator and not the software. Those who continue to overlook CorelDRAW miss out on the sheer power found in the print engine, particular the incredible imposition options. This project showed some great ways to use the new Symbols feature in CorelDRAW 11, but the imposition features have been around for several versions now. Hopefully those of you who use CorelDRAW will begin to utilize the imposition features while users of other software will give CorelDRAW another look.

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_{Last Updated
Wednesday, March 21, 2007.}

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