CorelDRAW, the long-running vector graphics editing package, is back with a new technical drawing release offering a slew of new features aimed at making life easier for technical illustrators and graphic designers alike.
CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2017 is very much focused on streamlining the user’s workflow with the promise of increased productivity.
Enhanced features include improved UI and dynamic drawing capability for isometric drawing, enhanced boundary tools allowing easier extension of curves for creating closed shapes from imported drawings, improved 3D visualization (for inclusion of 3D model renders in your 2D drawings) and enhanced XLIFF support.
In addition, the package offers new and improved technical drawing standard capability, including S1000D, SVG, PDF and ATA iSpec2200 (good news for aerospace drafters).
Not only is the software improving old features, but it has a bunch of new features too, including high-DPI display and multimonitor support, digital pen support and a touch workspace (because who uses a mouse anymore—it’s 2017 already), new photo editing powers allowing removal of blemishes and a snazzy new font manager.
To complement the new pen and touch support is a new feature called the LiveSketch tool, which takes inputs from your digital pen (or finger), adds some corrective AI magic to your manual inputs and transforms them into vector curves onscreen. The software will also allow the user to input manually (by hand) to existing vector curves in an old document.
The suite itself contains the following applications:
- Corel DESIGNER 2017– Precise technical illustration
- CorelDRAW 2017—Vector illustration and page layout
- Corel PHOTO-PAINT 2017—Image editing
- Lattice3D Studio Corel Edition—3D visualization and authoring
- Corel Font Manager 2017—Font exploration and management tool
- Corel PowerTRACE 2017—Bitmap-to-vector tracing (included as part of Corel DESIGNER and CorelDRAW applications)
- Corel CONNECT 2017—Content finder
- Corel CAPTURE 2017—Screen capture tools
And in addition to those individual main applications, CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2017 offers these supporting applications:
- BenVISTA PhotoZoom Pro 4 Plug-in for enlarging digital images
- Lattice3D Player—Interactive 3D viewing (plug-in)
- Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications—Task automation
- Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications—Task automation and advanced macro projects
- Barcode Wizard—Generator of bar codes in industry-standard formats
- Duplexing Wizard—Guide for two-sided printing
- GPL Ghostscript (ZIP)—Enhanced import of EPS and PS files
- WhatTheFont—Online font identifier
You can download a trial of CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2017 at this link. The full version is available by subscription ($360 per year), or a one-time payment of $999 will get you a perpetual liscense.