Technical Illustrators.org Forum

Believe me this take guts, but I've run into this problem for a while. So what I'm about to say is not meant to cause ill feeling. It's based on 35 years experience as a technical illustrator (21 as a digital TI.) In all that time I created exactly one technical illustration in Adobe Illustrator. The rest of my computer illustrations were done using CorelDRAW, AutoCAD, and TurboCAD. And in fact I removed and discarded AI from my computer last year.

I will say that I believe CorelDRAW beats Adobe Illustrator hands down. Why? Because I can do in three steps using CorelDRAW what it would take five steps to do in Adobe Illustrator. I call that a waste of productive time. AI aside, Adobe Inc's. really talent lays in marketing. They give free copies of their “also ran product” to all schools, which is why educators love it. Of course, considering the current state of education, it would probably be to much to expect educators to do any research on programs. So if that made you angry, hey you'll get over it!

How can you say it beats AI hands down if you've only ever made one illustration with it? I've made a few illustrations with Corel years ago but I wouldn't knock it now as I haven't used it in years, though I thought it sucked back then. AI isn't perfect by any means but I can can do things with it in 3 steps that take other people 10, is it the software or the user?

I have never seen anything of quality created in Corel, can you post up some stuff?

Take a look at my web site and portfolio. I illustrated two and a half Army Field Manuals with CorelDRAW, and completed illos for NASA with CD and AutoCAD. It may well be that it is the artist and not the software, but if the program is not intuitive it only make the job less interesting.


NFN-TechnicalIllustrator.web.officelive.com
Portffolio: http://NealF.imagekind.com/

Most of our tutorials/posts tend to be specific to Illustrator because, for better or worse, that's what all the editors here seem to use. I'm not trying to convince anyone that it's the best tool. If something better came along I would jump ship, I feel Adobe does very little to earn customer loyalty.

Have any tutorials/examples to show off what Corel can do? Maybe we can get them up on the blog!

Thank you James for an intelligent comment. I have to say, I have never used any of the available tutorials, because I figured out ways to do what needed to be done myself. But I know that type of info is out there. The one program I'd like to try, but haven't, is CorelDRAW Technical Illustrator.

In the same light, I once work for an engineer who love to tell me how to do my job. I'd listen to him then reply, “if I can't come up with five different ways to do this job, then I shouldn't be doing it.”

Alright, quit goofing around, you work for Corel don't you?

Give me an f..king break. I'm a contract Technical Illustrator (retired). You know, a job shopper, a guy or gal who works here or there, aka mercenary (the politically correct don't like that term.) Google contract employment and/or contract job hunter.

i personly use illustrator, have done since version 4 and have never had a need to change. But saying that, i only use it to apply colour to line work that ive created in Isodraw. I would never even entertain the idea of making technical line work in anything else but Isodraw, especial not corral draw or illustrator, they would do my head in!
but these days im a 100% 3D guy

cheers
glen

Adobe hasn't really made any vast improvements to their illustrator software in awhile, in some cases these updates have even made the program less functionable and sluggish. I know they added things like live trace, extra stroke options and a grid tool to their repitiore but it doesn't really address some of the more common problems encountered when creating vector based illustrations. For instance there are issues that occur when expanding strokes to outlines, and the snap to function behaves pretty buggy on occassion. The transform tool can only transform a specific number of objects within a group before it becomes to complex to do so. It would be nice if there was a snap to function within the transform tool options that would allow you to quickly snap your grouped object inside of a box already placed into the perspective you want. Instead you have to manually align it up all the time.

I guess I'm being picky but it shows that there are many areas that can be improved to speed up time in Illustrator.

Here's a case that Hulsey made about CS/CS2 where the older verisons of Illustrator actually happen to be superior.

"There is a known software bug in Adobe Illustrator CS/10 and Adobe Illustrator CS2 that will not allow you to export a file to Photoshop that is larger than 28 inches/300 dpi. Because of this bug, you must boot to Mac OS9 (or earlier) so that you can use Adobe Illustrator 9 (or earlier) to do the exporting (very annoying).

In addition, the rasterizing/export function in Adobe Illustrator CS/CS2 creates very rough line quality with a noticeable stair-stepping effect when converting a vector file to a Photoshop raster file. The problem with rendering (rasterizing) line-work has nothing to do with document resolution - it is a problem with how the software "averages" (smoothes) the stair-step effect when rendering a line that is at a steep angle (ie. 5º, 85º, 95º, etc.) or a gradual arc. Even if you use a workaround of exporting to a higher resolution (say 600 dpi), then scale the line art back down to 350 dpi in Photoshop, it is still hopelessly inferior to the now-ancient Illustrator 9 which had the best exported line quality."

I have very little knowledge on Coreldraw. I think I dabbled in it a bit back when corel was releasing its suite 8 in 98'. Back then I didn't know what I was doing, Jasc paintshop pro was my drawing program of choice but it was all raster base. I read that Corel acquired Jasc in 2004 and it now has vector capabilities with its newest release "PaintShop Photo Pro X3"

I think integration with 3D will be the biggest thing now, taking your models to 2D linework will save soo much more time. Illustrator gives you a lot of control but it fails with the 3D portion.

All in all, It's good to see competition, I use Illustrator mainly because thats what I was given at school to work from. It serves it's purpose pretty well so I can't complain.