Differences Between Weld, Combine and Trim Functions in CorelDRAW

March 11, 2014

One of the great things about being at a trade show is talking to all the people who visit the booth and solving the problems they are having. Some of the solutions require a detailed solution while others are quite simple.

A woman visited the booth and her goal was to use text to cut a hole into the middle of a heart shape. Someone had told her the Weld command in CorelDRAW was the answer and it wasn’t working for her. Below are the two objects involved in this operation.

Text and Heart Before CorelDRAW Weld

It is a very simple project with only two objects involved. The key is that she was told that Weld was the answer when in fact it wouldn’t work at all for this scenario. I repeated the project using three different commands to get the results shown below.

Text and Heart After CorelDRAW Weld
The example on the left used the Weld command in CorelDRAW. When you have two objects and Weld them, the outermost outline wins. Since all of the text was inside of the heart, the text is basically throw out and the result is the outline of the heart only. If you were to look at the Wireframe view, the text is completely gone.

For the example in the middle, I used the Combine command (Ctrl + L) and it is the best choice for this example. The shape of the text was cut from the heart and is a transparent window to anything behind it.

Another potential solution is the Trim command. It does cut the shape of the text from the heart, but it leaves the original text behind by default. Just so you could see the cutout, I moved the original text up after using the Trim command. So Trim also works, it just takes an extra step.

In CorelDRAW X6 Unleashed, I explore each of these commands in-depth so you’ll know which command to use in any given situation. If you don’t already have a copy, get one now so that you don’t find yourself frustrated using the wrong feature.

Post Discussion

5 Comments

  1. The Author

    Brilliant! Thanks for that. As long as I’ve been using Corel, I don’t use even half the wondrous tools.

    Reply
  2. Foster D. Coburn III

    Glad you enjoyed the post. If you are only using a limited number of the included tools, you should serious consider getting CorelDRAW X6 Unleashed so you can learn about all the things you are missing.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    You could also you “Back Minus Front” as another way to do it as well.

    Reply
  4. Foster D. Coburn III

    While the “Back Minus Front” command would indeed work for this example, I simply find no need for it as it (as well as Front Minus Back) don’t do anything that can’t be done with Combine or Trim.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    Awesome

    Reply

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Foster D. Coburn III

Foster D. Coburn III built his first Web site in 1995 and he has been working exclusively in WordPress since 2013. He has used the Divi theme exclusively since 2015. Earlier in his career he was the author of 13 best-selling books on CorelDRAW and has been a contributor to numerous technology and graphics-related magazines. Foster has taken many projects, including this Web site, from the early design stage through to a finished piece. He has been a featured speaker at many graphics conferences.

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