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An answer to those who came from CorelDraw, please!


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Hi
I Purchased AD intending to migrate from CorelDraw not because this is a bad product but because AD is excellent and sells for a reasonable price in a time of greed and abuse of dominant position (Adobe, Microsoft, etc.) a path that Corel is stepping too.  However I got extremely disappointed when unable to import in AD the many drawings I have in cdr and I need to use. Searching the forum I read many references to the subject from those I highlight this dialog:

Posted January 26, 2015 by JeffrsnapIn
Any chance of being able to import other formats in the future, such as .cdr, .dxf, .dwg etc? I have been working in Corel Draw for years, and have built up a huge library of client's artwork that I need to work with from time to time. I'm trying to move away from Corel draw now, and use Affinity as much as possible, but every time I need to edit an old drawing, I have to go back to Corel Draw, even if its to make a PDF that can be opened in AD...

Posted January 26, 2015 by MattP
Hi JeffrsnapIn,
I think it has been mentioned before - it's definitely something we'd consider, we just need a little time... At present we're trying to flesh out our features a little to the level where we're happy, but when we have a little time we can try to add it :)
Thanks,
Matt

Two and half years later we still have no cdr import and I quote the JeffrsnapIn words adding that, even using the pdf and other intermediate file formats the trick is far from adequate.

For me this is not a minor issue neither for many other users in the forum, I can see. Can we have a clear statement about? Please!
Best regards
 

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You have my sympathy. I used Corel Draw extensively some years ago. I tried to ensure my work was portable, and saved it of as .pdf as well as in native format, and .ai when that was available. Unfortunately, this was before the PDF format was defined as it was today. The result, an archive of 4 - 5 years of work completely inaccessible on my current system.

 

Moral of the story: no matter how versatile a proprietary format is, always try to duplicate your work in the most widely used standard formats. Serif is good in that one can save to .svg, which tho' limited in some respects, is a published open standard that anyone may implement w/o charge.

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1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

Have you tried exporting from Corel Draw as SVG. Worked for me.

Yes, svg and also pdf and both work most of the times. Once in a while I find little errors particularly in texts with effects, though easily corrected. I’m far from having experimented the process extensively and the problem is when importing using those intermediate file formats everything needs to be carefully checked and we may have to invest a lot of time. I imagine that if the cdr file could be directly imported, most of the possible idiosyncrasies were already surpassed.

My request is aiming an improvement very important for me but it does not prevent me to migrate do AD. It is a very competent program and I don’t see problems in my adaptation.

Best regards 

1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

Have you tried exporting from Corel Draw as SVG. Worked for me.

 

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1 hour ago, gdenby said:

You have my sympathy. I used Corel Draw extensively some years ago. I tried to ensure my work was portable, and saved it of as .pdf as well as in native format, and .ai when that was available. Unfortunately, this was before the PDF format was defined as it was today. The result, an archive of 4 - 5 years of work completely inaccessible on my current system.

 

Moral of the story: no matter how versatile a proprietary format is, always try to duplicate your work in the most widely used standard formats. Serif is good in that one can save to .svg, which tho' limited in some respects, is a published open standard that anyone may implement w/o charge.

Obviously, while we wait, the answer for those who have extensive work in cdr is to keep it where it is together with the CorelDraw program that made it, to be used for the conversion when needed. The problem is, if we wait too long, we face the risk that the software program become obsolete for our current machine. (Just kidding!)

Best regards 

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I avoided upgrading my Mac OS beyond Snow Leopard for a long time, to keep Corel Draw 11 running. I used Corel Draw for nearly 20 years. Now that I had to change to a newer MacBook I can't run Draw at all, so I have ZERO access to much of my work and can't do the SVG export either. I'm considering paying a local print bureau to convert a load of stuff on their Windows/Corel setup for me.

 

I'd love AD to support .cdr files. It would be like a tiny little Christmas :)

 

Please?

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16 hours ago, wallis45 said:

I imagine that if the cdr file could be directly imported, most of the possible idiosyncrasies were already surpassed.

If a feature of Corel Draw has no direct equivalent in Affinity Designer, then there is no guarantee that supporting importing cdr files into AD will be accurate or reduce the need to check each file for problems. Even if Serif/Affinity can develop ways to approximate & integrate them with the existing AD feature set, it could take a lot of time & effort to do that. So it would be better for everybody if that effort went into adding similar features to AD and/or improving the existing ones.

 

But that in turn is complicated by the likely need to change the native Affinity file format (used by both Affinity Designer & Affinity Photo) to support those features, which would probably cause the same kind of issues we have already seen in the file format changes that make many documents created or editing in the 1.6 beta versions incompatible with the 1.5 versions.

 

Point being, this is more complicated than it might seem, which may help explain why we have seen little apparent progress on this for over 2 years.

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23 hours ago, R C-R said:

If a feature of Corel Draw has no direct equivalent in Affinity Designer, then there is no guarantee that supporting importing cdr files into AD will be accurate or reduce the need to check each file for problems. Even if Serif/Affinity can develop ways to approximate & integrate them with the existing AD feature set, it could take a lot of time & effort to do that. So it would be better for everybody if that effort went into adding similar features to AD and/or improving the existing ones.

 

But that in turn is complicated by the likely need to change the native Affinity file format (used by both Affinity Designer & Affinity Photo) to support those features, which would probably cause the same kind of issues we have already seen in the file format changes that make many documents created or editing in the 1.6 beta versions incompatible with the 1.5 versions.

 

Point being, this is more complicated than it might seem, which may help explain why we have seen little apparent progress on this for over 2 years.

Hi, R C-R, I fully agree with your argumentation. I’ve started this tread but now I realize that I’m demanding beyond reality. If AD should be a replica of CorelDraw (fortunately it is not the case) to import their files with total perfection, what will be its advantage besides price considerations? If we demand an AD loaded with all CorelDraw approaches to the design features on top of their own for the importation purposes, will that be reasonable? It’s obviously not and we should allow AD to follow its own path which is being absolutely competent as far as I can see in the limited time I’ve dedicated to it so far. And I’m glad that, nevertheless, Serif/Affinity does not look to the problem with arrogance, on the contrary, they claim they are doing their best. I’m thanking them.

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  • 1 year later...

Hi, I'm currently considering purchasing AD for my Surface Pro. I have been a CorelDraw user professionally for over 20 years and looking for an alternative going forward. Affinity looks like a great option. I was wondering if anyone has tried exporting a CorelDraw page/graphic out as an .eps and then opening it in AD for editing? 

 

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18 hours ago, Netti said:

I was wondering if anyone has tried exporting a CorelDraw page/graphic out as an .eps and then opening it in AD for editing?

You could try posting a file here and see if anyone can edit it.  

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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