Learn how to customize the CorelDRAW workspace with toolbars, buttons and shortcut keys tailored to your specific graphic design workflow. Everyone works differently and has their favorite go-to tools and features but not everything can be found on a default toolbar. In this tutorial we will review the main customization options and show you how to create a custom workspace. You will learn how to create a new toolbar and add commands to it; how to change your toolbar buttons into captions for easier viewing; how to add commands to right-click menus; how to create or modify shortcut keys; and finally, how to save your new custom workspace.
Thanks for watching! We hope you found this tutorial helpful and we would love to hear your feedback in the Comments section at the bottom of the page. You will find a written version of this tutorial below, and a printable PDF copy to download on the Download Resources tab above.
Your new toolbar will appear somewhere in the workspace, but it may be difficult to see since it is just a small box with an X in the top right corner. You may have to move the Options dialog box to the side or click OK to close it in order to see the new toolbar.
You can drag the toolbar anywhere you want in the workspace. It can float, or you can dock it in the top or left tool bar areas. We recommend leaving it floating on the left-hand side of the page while we add commands to it. We will dock it later.
If you are not sure which menu your command is listed under, click on the Binoculars icon beside the dropdown menu and type the name of the command you are looking for. It will jump to the first result it finds but you can click on Find Next until you get to the command you want.
Once you find the command you want, drag it onto your new toolbar. Click Close to close the search window then click OK to exit the Commands dialog box.
You can also add tools from existing toolbars to your new toolbar. Hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys, then select the tool and drag it to your new toolbar. This is especially handy for commands that are hidden within a tool group flyout, for example the Smooth tool under the Shape tools group.
Note: if you want to move your new toolbar to another spot, right-click on one of the tools and uncheck Lock Toolbars. A grey dotted line will appear, indicating that you can now move your toolbar.
You can turn your most commonly used toolbar icons into captions (tool names) so you can easily recognize them. We will use Group and Ungroup as an example, but in order to make them show up we first need to create some objects that we can group:
You will now see the caption Group Objects instead of the button. Click on it to group the rectangles together. Repeat the process of creating captions for the Ungroup and Ungroup All buttons.
Now you can click and drag it to the Context Menu Bar but first make sure you know exactly where you want it to go. In this case, we want the Edit Text command to appear as part of the right-click menu of Selected Artistic Text.
Grab the Edit Text command and drag it over to the Context Menu Bar while holding down your mouse key. Still with your mouse key held down, drag it over top of Selection and the Selection menu will expand, then you can drag it over top of Artistic Text Selected, then over to the flyout that appears to the right. The grey line insertion indicator shows you where the command will appear when you let go of your mouse key to drop the command into the right-click menu.
Click OK to close the Customization Options window. If you want to try out your newly customized right-click menus, activate the Text tool and create some text anywhere on the page.
Activate the Pick tool and select the text you created. Now right-click on the text and/or the document desktop and/or the page and you will see the Edit Text command is now in the right-click menu.
Another way to customize the CorelDRAW workspace is by adding new shortcuts or modifying existing shortcuts. In this example we will again use the Wireframe View and Enhanced View commands that we previously added to our new toolbar.
Add a check beside Navigate to conflict on Assign. Now after you click Assign to make S the new shortcut key, it will automatically bring up the LiveSketch command and you can assign a new shortcut key (such as Alt + S) here to resolve the conflict.
Once you have completed the modifications to customize the CorelDRAW workspace, it is important to save it, so you can reload at any time or share it with another user. Go to Tools > Customization. Your new workspace should have a check beside it, indicating that it is the workspace in use. Click on the Export button.
CorelCAD 2023 is the last version. It was released in 2022 and updated with a service pack in December 2022, which is the last setup availble. As of January 2024, CorelCAD is discontinued and it is no longer possible to buy new licenses.
CorelCAD users with a valid perpetual license are offered a 50% time-limited discount to buy a 3 Years license of the ARES Trinity of CAD software, including ARES Commander, ARES Kudo and ARES Touch. As the 3 Years Plan is already offering 3 years for the price of 2, the 50% discount is granting CorelCAD users 3 years for the price of 1! More detailed information is found on www.graebert.com/corelcad .
Any perpetual license of CorelCAD for Windows or Mac is valid for the Transition Offer to the ARES CAD software. You can check the validity of your CorelCAD product key on the page www.graebert.com/corelcad.
Graebert reserves the right to interrupt this offer at any time. If you are interested we recommend that you take action now, and start a free 30-day trial of the ARES Trinity of CAD software. In the unlikely event that the offer would expire before the end of your 30-day trial we guarantee that we would extend the offer for you until expiry of your trial.
The decision to discontinue CorelCAD was taken by Alludo. The users of CorelCAD have been informed by Alludo in an emailing in January 2024. You can read their official statement at the top of the page www.graebert.com/corelcad. More generally, you can read more about the new global strategy of Alludo from this press release.
As CorelCAD was mostly distributed as perpetual licenses, the impact on the users is limited. The CorelCAD users are free to keep using their perpetual license. The transition offer from Graebert is mostly aiming at offering a continuity, to get more features and future updates.
Alludo will keep offering online technical support to the CorelCAD users, as previously, until end of 2025. After this date, Alludo may continue to offer support for licenses (re)activation but only on a good will basis.
To benefit from a free technical support from Graebert for 3 months, the CorelCAD users are invited to visit the page www.graebert.com/corelcad and start a free 30-day trial for ARES Commander. Free technical support for CorelCAD will be provided for the 90 days following the start of the trial. It is however not possible to extend the technical support for CorelCAD after these 90 days, neither on a free, nor commercial basis.
Not at all. No matter if you decide to take the transition offer or not, your Perpetual license of CorelCAD will remain untouched. Although you will enter your product key of CorelCAD as coupon code it will NOT disable your license. As a result, if you buy our transition offer, you remain free to use your CorelCAD license in parallel on the same computer (although it will not bring any benefit in terms of features) or another computer.
Most essentially, when your 3 years license of ARES will expire, you will keep the option to return to your older perpetual license of CorelCAD if you are not convinced. But we trust you will like to continue with another ARES license, possibly another 3 years plan but also a perpetual license of ARES Commander if you prefer.
On the page www.graebert.com/corelcad we invite you to discover our video explaining the top 10 benefits and to download our full benchmark table stressing out all the benefits. In short, the latest version of CorelCAD 2023 was based on ARES Commander 2023.
If CorelCAD is still installed on a computer you can find the product key in the About box of CorelCAD. The product key is 27 characters long. It is the part after the underscore in the SERIAL NUMBER you see in the About box.
Each product key of CorelCAD can only be used once for the Transition Offer, and only for one user. If you have multiple users we invite you to follow the steps on the page www.graebert.com/corelcad once for each product key, and to repeat the same process several times if needed.
No, the Transition Offer is only offered from our online E-Store and only via www.graebert.com/corelcad. Other purchase methods can however be used to buy new licenses without the migration discount, if you want for example to increase the number of your users.
Yes of course. CorelCAD and ARES Commander are based on the same ARES CAD technology. They both read and save directly in the same DWG format. Besides, ARES Commander is now able to import/export in CorelDRAW (*.cdr) or Corel DESIGNER (*.des) file formats. Read our comparison table to see all the file formats supported.
Yes, if you take a look at the BIM drawings features of ARES Commander, you will see that, unlike CorelCAD, ARES Commander can import Revit (*.rvt) or IFC files to not only visualize the BIM projects in 3D, but also automate the production in DWG format of floorplans, sections and elevations extracted from the BIM models. Additionally, you may export the DWG files to CorelDRAW or Corel DESIGNER file formats.
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