Corel Draw – Print Preview Nesting
Corel Draw – Print Preview Nesting
Using the print preview nesting feature in Corel Draw allows you to create a evenly spaced, nested design for your artwork.
This is especially important for use with a laser cutting machine, as it can eliminate interference between adjacent artwork. You may find that if two jobs have a border, you will cut the border lines twice causing burning and other unwanted issues. This technique will work with identical jobs or multiple different designs. This tool is especially useful for multiple print merge jobs, for more information about print merge, you can Click Here.
Finished Artwork
First things first, design your artwork in a new document and click “File” then navigate down to “Print”.
In the JobControl printing preferences change the width and height of the printing area to the size of your material or the size of the laser bed. Once you have sorted out all other options, click on the JC button to accept the changes.
You will now notice you have a large print area with your design in the middle of the page. If you click the “Print Preview” button at the bottom left corner of the dialog window you will be greeted with a new window.
The next window you will be greeted with is the one shown above. This is the Print Preview Window, it shows you what your artwork will look like once printed to JobControl. But there is a special tool in this window which will allow us to nest our artwork efficiently.
If you click the second icon down on the left hand side tool strip, it will show you the current job preview. Right now we are printing the file with a 1×1 matrix of our artwork. By increasing those values we are able to fill the print area.
As you can see, in this example I have made a matrix of my artwork at a size of 9 x 5. This means it will repeat my artwork 9 times in the X direction and 5 times in the Y direction. This is done by adjusting the values in the area circled.
By clicking between the artwork vertically, indicated by the red lines in the picture above, you are able to split the artwork, effectively spacing them away from each other a specific amount. The amount can be changed in the top toolbar. In this case I have spaced them 5mm apart.
I then did the same thing in the horizontal direction.
NOTE: There is a known bug in CorelDraw X7 which requires you to have the vertical and horizontal spacing as a different value. Just simply change the value to a smaller or larger value then the previous step. You can then change it back and repeat this step to have a uniform spacing around the artwork. In my case I first created a 6mm space, then change it to 5mm and it worked as expected.
As you can see the jobs are now spaced 5mm away from each other in all directions. But there is one more optional (but recommended) step to finish the design.
By clicking CTRL + M or clicking on the “Options” icon in the top toolbar, you can bring up this window. By first clicking on the “Layout” tab, you will now be greeted with this panel. First click “Reposition images to:” radio button, then setting the dropdown menu option to “Top Left Corner”. Press “Apply” and “OK”.
Last step is to make sure the drop down menu, highlighted in red, is set to “Edit Margins” is selected. Once that is selected, press the icon to the right of the drop down menu, highlighted in blue, to position the jobs to the top left corner.
Once you are happy with the design, click “File” then navigate down to “Print”.
Once it has printed you will see the job in JobControl. Drag the job from the job queue onto the plate and view your perfectly nested design.
Using these simple steps will allow you to nest multiple jobs for easy cutting and engraving, using uniform spacing between jobs.
That’s it for now!
Catch ya next time!
