CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2021 has multiple updates to advance state-of-the-art technical illustration and “technical marketing” in a world that has now shifted to remote work as an expected standard.
Klaus Vossen, Senior Product Manager, CorelDRAW, told Architosh that CorelDRAW Technical Suite’s collaboration tools were perfectly timed. “We had introduced new collaboration functionality inside CorelDRAW products last year and literally shortly before the lockdown,” he says. In the latest version, collaboration features were further improved.
CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2021
Before we jump into the latest improvements, we should review with readers the components of this particular suite of software from Corel.
As readers may know, we have written before about CorelCAD and its unique advantage and connection to CorelDRAW graphics applications, including Corel DESIGNER.
CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2021 includes multiple Corel applications aimed at providing the most professional set of features for the creation of technical illustration and technical marketing. Klaus Vossen describes “technical marketing” as images created for marketing in technical environments or technically-oriented industries where engineering data is used in the products being marketed.”
An image of Corel Designer 2021, which is an application included in CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2021. Corel Designer, as you will learn in this article, is a multi-faceted layout and vector graphics application that can communicate directly to XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition. The new edition now supports multipage layouts like the one shown above.
Corel DESIGNER by itself is suitable for various technical illustration roles across industries, from AEC, manufacturing, product design, to GIS industries.
Technical Suite adds CorelDRAW, Corel PHOTO-PAINT, Corel Font Manager, XVL Studio Corel Edition, plus a version of CorelDRAW for iPad (iOS) and Web. It also throws in a screen capture tool and a RAW photo editor. All of this is fine for most Corel DESIGNER users. Still, engineering companies like the BMWs and John Deer’s of the world—in other words, big engineering companies—need another companion tool named XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition.
XVL Studio—An Overview
XVL Studio Corel Edition and its more extensive, more powerful sibling version connect directly to engineering CAD data. They both then prepare this data for snapshot views that are then pushed into Corel DESIGNER.
Large engineering companies in aerospace, automotive, industrial machinery, and the like are developing their innovations in 3D CAD tools like CATIA, SolidWorks, Inventor, PTC Creo, and the like. For example, if you build car brake systems, that data gets communicated in technical illustration for multiple means, including spare parts manuals, installation manuals, sales brochures et cetera.
XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition shown here connects directly to engineering CAD data and enables technical illustrators to create, arrange, and prepare 3D CAD assemblies and parts graphics which are further worked on in Corel Designer.
XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition enables connection and utilization to native 3D CAD format for the tools just mentioned, in addition to NX, Solid Edge, and open formats like IGES, STEP, Parasolid, JT, and 3D PDFs.
For the rest of this article, we will be talking about XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition and just referring to it as “XVL Studio” for short.
Christian Schmaehl, Product Manager, Technical Graphics, walked me through the latest updates and the general process of working in the suite.
In general, XVL Studio is used to pull 3D engineering CAD data (files) into XVL Studio and create assembly, disassembly, exploded views, and spare parts and manufacturing BOMs, and step-by-step instructions in illustrations or animations. A primary goal is to arrange engineering data into pictures of the 3D objects and then take “snapshots” (views) and push these views to Corel DESIGNER for further illustration or technical marketing work.
This image shows Corel Designer and XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition side by side. Engineering data is pulled across this two-app workflow, but illustrators can obtain updated engineering CAD data and pass updates across the entire workflow, saving valuable time.
This process enables technical illustration and marketing teams to work alongside engineers without interfering in their daily workflow and without the need to use engineering software to access 3D CAD data.
While Schmaehl demoed XVL Studio in a connected way to Corel DESIGNER, it can be used alone as well, particularly for the export of animations of CAD data, like for step-by-step instructions.
XVL Studio also has core 3D capabilities apart from its CAD sources. These include precise measurement and evaluation tools, including clash detection. Because XVL Studio is able to merge new revisions of the same CAD file into the existing work, the illustrator can start early and update his work with new revisions without starting new from the beginning”.
Because it creates a linked connection to CAD data sources, it can update an assembly if engineers have updated various CAD data parts. Its Find tool can detect updated parts, and it can display before and after views of the 3D assembly or model.
XVL Studio has a robust set of visual display options. For example, you can drop out all color shading and render a 3D model line view. You can colorize certain parts to call attention and add advanced 3D annotations.
next page: New in 2021 Version & Better Remote Work
New in 2021 Version
Updates to the CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2021 include features in three primary areas:
- A focus on enhancements between XVL Studio and Corel DESIGNER.
- Performance enhancements to make generally working faster.
- Go beyond pure illustration and add interactivity for objects.
For the second case, Christian Schmaehl, Product Manager, Technical Graphics, notes: “Everybody wants to work faster, so we looked twice at the functionality in the product to find areas where we could make things more convenient.”
Three-point Borderless Threads is one of the new features in Corel Designer 2021. Bolts are one of the common items in mechanical parts in industries like automotive. Being able to illustrate or add missing bolts is a common task in the types of workflows that CorelDRAW Technical Suite addresses.
“On top of improvements in these three broad areas, we also added all of the CorelDRAW features from that product, released earlier in the year. So now they are in Corel DESIGNER as well,” he says.
To create a more seamless experience working between XVL Studio and DESIGNER, Corel this year added a 3-point thread creation tool. “When you take your model over from the engineering world to the technical illustration world, you might have something missing,” says Schmaehl. Threads on bolts are one of the everyday things. (see image above)
Schmaehl notes in previous versions, you could fix it in DESIGNER, but it took far longer.
On the XVL Studio side, one can create links on parts in assembly models that convert to HTML links when brought over to Corel DESIGNER. “We had some users who were working with SVG files, and they started linking things to other files and URLs,” says Schmaehl, and these didn’t transform so well over in DESIGNER, so we fixed that. Additionally, variable part names used in the Assembly Tree now map to Corel DESIGNER.
Projection Bookmarks are a new feature in version 2021 that saves perspective working plane settings, thereby helping users move swiftly between illustrative work relative to different “planes” on 3D objects.
“An important thing is the data is not imported into DESIGNER but rather linked. So if I change the source content, I can then update it here in DESIGNER,” he adds. When XVL Studio and DESIGNER are opened at the same time with the “same content” (3D Model / Illustration from it), then the user can invoke the update of the illustration in DESIGNER from XVL Studio. Without having any link DESIGNER detects the data that comes in from XVL Studio and updates it in DESIGNER where it was placed.
In the area of performance and working faster, Corel has added Projection Bookmarks as a significant new feature in Corel DESIGNER.
The 3D cube or Project Axes Docker will be familiar to most CAD and technical illustration users. When you want to work on a specific set of axes (X-Y plane or Z-Y plane) or a plane off cartesian axes, you can click three vertices on a plane (surface on the model) and pin Corel DESIGNER to that perspective. Now all tools in DESIGNER are conveniently oriented to that perspective. This is how you bring illustration conveniently into the 3D CAD world. (see image above)
In this 2021 version, however, Corel added Bookmarks so you can save these changed perspectival settings for different areas of the 3D model. Accessing them from either a bookmark directly in the illustration or a drop-down list, the user can speed along with other projections of the 3D model and work much faster.
You can also project shapes (like circles) in and out of parallel perspective with a handy new shortcut. This is helpful when adding boreholes, decals, etc. to models that don’t have them.
The third area of improvement in this year’s version is in interactivity. As noted above, Schmaehl pointed out that some users were already attempting linking. Corel has added a group of interactive features that empower users to build interactive spare parts pages. “If you want to put something on a tablet for your service staff, then you can put a link here in Corel DESIGNER to a source of the part, for example, says Schmaehl.
Interactive Spare Parts Catalogs are now even easier to create in version 2021.
Users can pull data from assembly trees originating in the CAD source data, add data fields that can add more data, or provide alternative naming of parts. Color highlighting can be set up on interactive events like “mouse rollover” much the same way as web development tools; when the end-user rolls their mouse over callouts, the callout itself and the part in the assembly model and/or a parts table is highlighted in color.
Another related change is linking (.des) and (.cdr) and spreadsheet files into Corel DESIGNER, directly into the Sources docker palette. Now users can pair data tables on parts and assemblies, and with the new interactive SVG export, they can publish fully interactive documentation online.
Better Remote Work
Like most software companies during the global pandemic, remote work became critical for users. And Corel has responded. Users across organizations can collaborate with new features such as the new Project Dashboard. Additionally, users can attach review comments in a Comment status palette. These comments are live and passed through the cloud; delivered annotations work in both (.des) and (.cdr) files.
Other new features include a new asset management workflow that is dynamic. Organizations can create a single source of truth for design assets. These other key touches like the new Draw in Perspective feature in DESIGNER and Multipage View and improved photo-editing round make CorelDRAW Technical Suite 2021 a compelling offering.