reducing nodes on Corel drawing

[solomanb]

I must be missing something. I have a scroll selected it shows 8575 nodes. How do I reduce this so I can export as a dxf. Then I can cut on the table and make some smoke. I have read and read again. Please help .

Thanks Solomanb

[SignTorch Vector Art]

The most basic way is to select some or all the nodes (blue), with the node-tool (orange), then use the reduce-nodes slider (pink). Just experiment with different smoothing amounts. Sometimes it is not very effective, and sometimes it is very destructive. Sometimes it works to select groups of nodes, and smooth different sections by different amounts, in order to control and limit distortion.

I usually give all the nodes a little smoothing, then go in with the node tool and select and delete stretches of excess nodes, corel sort of averages the curve to pass smoothly through where the nodes were, semi-tangent to the remaining endpoints, which seems to produce the most accurate and effective smoothing.

It helps to have zoom and pan assigned on the mouse so you can zoom in and move around expediently. (see tutorial)



A lot depends on the nature of the excess nodes, whether they are jagged or fairly smooth, line segments, cusp nodes, or what. If you don't have any luck, export a single sub-path (not the whole thing if you don't want to post the whole thing) in CMX format, and post it, there can be better not-so-basic ways to smooth some things.

[solomanb]

Thanks for the info. I checked the node count on the origional file , 45 nodes. So what ever I did after that increased them like 200 times. I have no idea what I did. I set up corel like you did on your tute. I will try it out later this week ..too busy at work to play at home. Again thanks for the info.

[SignTorch Vector Art]

If you export an early dxf version (without splines) and then reimport, it will have converted every curve to many small line segments, and have many times more nodes.

Even then, a 200x increase is inexplicable.

[solomanb]

I won..... How do I post picture.
Thanks Solomanb

[SignTorch Vector Art]

I won..... How do I post picture.
Thanks Solomanb

click the upload attachment tab under the reply form