CDR Support ?

[MarcusR]

Hello,

First of all I have to say I bought the software now, it's great
I bought Affinity Designer, Photo, Publisher.

I'm switching from CorelDraw, I don't like the rental license.

Yes, of course, so I would like support for *.CDR files to be able to continue using the CorelDraw files.

But I noticed that CorelDraw can create tables,
I would like that for Affinity Designer too.

Regards

MarcusR

[GarryP]

 

Welcome to the forums @MarcusR

If you search the forums for “cdr” (without the quotes) you will find lots of information and advice.
For example:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/29369-future-support-for-corel-draw-files/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/158029-using-corel-draw-files/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1059-cdr-import/
etc. etc.

Please try searching for answers before making new requests.

[James Mcilwraith]

Welcome Marcus from a fellow Corel Draw refugee.
A nice welcome from GarryP, a mildly snotty post that actually serves to point out that people have been waiting for support for CDR files since 2014...
I exported all my CDR files to PDF's including all the really old stuff that I will never ever need. It took me a couple of days altogether but has proved well worth it. I have had very little trouble importing them into Affinity and then saving the as Affinity files. There are still a few things I miss from Corel like Trace and the Barcode generator, but overall I love Affinity and wouldn't go back to Corel even if the abandoned their annoying annual licence policy.   

[GarryP]

10 hours ago, James Mcilwraith said:

a mildly snotty post

I was simply restating one of the guidelines which Serif have asked forum members to adhere to for the benefit of all members – see attached image, or look at the top of most forum sections.

The more threads we have about the same thing the more difficult it is for people searching for any answers, or official responses, which might exist.

Multiple threads for the same thing ‘dilutes’ the feedback from multiple users across disparate threads and makes it more difficult for Serif to judge the overall ‘weight’ of requirements for something. A dozen petitions with a hundred names on each is not as ‘weighty’ as a single petition with over a thousand names on it.

Maybe, if people stopped creating new threads for things that have already been requested elsewhere and ‘added their voice’ to existing requests instead, Serif might take more notice of those requests.

[James Mcilwraith]

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

I was simply restating one of the guidelines which Serif have asked forum members to adhere to for the benefit of all members – see attached image, or look at the top of most forum sections.

The more threads we have about the same thing the more difficult it is for people searching for any answers, or official responses, which might exist.

Multiple threads for the same thing ‘dilutes’ the feedback from multiple users across disparate threads and makes it more difficult for Serif to judge the overall ‘weight’ of requirements for something. A dozen petitions with a hundred names on each is not as ‘weighty’ as a single petition with over a thousand names on it.

Maybe, if people stopped creating new threads for things that have already been requested elsewhere and ‘added their voice’ to existing requests instead, Serif might take more notice of those requests.

If you had actually bothered to read the posts you recommend you would have learnt that the moderator of the time said "This has been mentioned before - but I would agree that the forum's search functions are very poor so I'm not surprised if you couldn't find it! There's no reason why we couldn't add CDR import in the future.......The more times people ask for it, the more likely it is to be flagged as a priority task"
Obviously since the topic first came up in 2014 not enough people have been posting about it otherwise importing would have been implemented by now.

 

[GarryP]

I didn’t recommend those threads. I merely gave them as examples of what you can see if you do a search.

The post you mentioned was from 2016 and the forum software has been upgraded many times since, so the statements in it aren’t particularly relevant here.

I don’t know how to respond to your last statement as it can be interpreted in a number of ways.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, James Mcilwraith said:

Obviously since the topic first came up in 2014 not enough people have been posting about it otherwise importing would have been implemented by now.

User interest in an enhancement is a consideration, but not the only consideration. Serif makes their decisions for their own reasons, and based on many factors.

[Graemee]

I'd just like to add to this feature request.

I use Affintiy myself on my ipad as a "hobby"user, but in my day job, I use Coreldraw on a PC. I just had t get a new PC, because the old one is dying, and find I can't install my 2019 CorelDraw on it for some reason. I would love to change over from Coreldraw ( I really don't much like it, being an old Freehand fan), but that will be a hard argument to make to the company without a direct opening ability for our hundreds of existing artworks in Coreldraw that need changes occasionally, ( we are a manufacturing company) While some of these are also saved in editible pdf form, many are not. Having the ability to open a Coreldraw document without distortion, would make it much easier for me to convince the company to change over all it's installations.

[Pšenda]

9 hours ago, Graemee said:

Having the ability to open a Coreldraw document without distortion

If you read the posts and requests regarding the addition of formats that Affinity can read and export, you will find that Serif is very cautious about adding additional formats (for understandable reasons). As far as I know, for example, they're not even considering adding a custom format import from legacy Plus apps - and that's saying something when they don't even want to add a custom format, let alone add a format from other apps. Personally, I would not have much faith in the addition of the CDR format, certainly not in the near future.
Serif generally recommends (even for its own Plus formats) conversion to PDF and its import into Affinity - see also the previous recommendation. If necessary, online services can also be used for this.

[2ddpainter]

Well, I think it is very unlikely that Affinity Designer will ever import Corel Draw files.

As a proprietary file format (Corel's own file format) it might be difficult for other
developers to develop an import Cdr Format. There is also little information about it.

Btw. it has always been advisable to save your files in an open file format wherever possible.

There exist also some Online .CDR Converters
per Example "Zamzar"
https://www.zamzar.com/de/convert/cdr-to-ai/

There are others too, search for "online cdr converter"

[dcr]

Inkscape reportedly can import CDR files.  I don't know how well it does, but that might be an option for converting CDR files into something AD can open.

[2ddpainter]

I have tried importing some .CDR Files into Inkscape.
It only works with simple designs, blending doesn't work
and some other Corel specific things.

I always miss in such statements which .CDR Versions can be imported.
The Inkscape manual is kind of outdated but mentions CDR versions 7 to X4 there.

In my experiments I used CDR version 2020, those Files were also imported.
But as i wrote above only simple Designs. Could be that parts of your design
are not displayed, or in the case of blends only the start and end object
would be imported.