Users are often asking me about things that don’t work right for them in CorelDRAW. Many times I have an answer, but some issues can stump me too. Recently I was working on a project that used the Smart Fill tool. When I clicked in a defined area with the Smart Fill tool, an object was created elsewhere in the drawing. Suffice it to say it had me baffled.

Before I get to the full solution, I had drawn some wavy lines that were open curves. The key here is that they were open curves and therefore they don’t display a fill. Somewhere in the process of creating the project I had filled the open curves. This was noted on the Status Bar at the bottom right of the screen, but there was no fill shown on screen.

You see the solution to the problem was to get rid of the fill on the open curves. Thanks to the development staff at Corel for helping me to figure this one out. They don’t feel this is the correct behavior and will put it on the list of things to fix in the future.

Many times when users are having trouble, a lot of questions are asked about their computer and the file causing the problem. The problem I had with Smart Fill are a great example how even the smallest of details can help to solve the problem. So if you are in a situation when someone is trying to help you solve a problem, make sure you help them by providing all of the requested information.