inkscape or CorelDraw?

[Greg_R]

Ok it's time to stop procrastinating. I have to learn CAD for plasma use. Should a newb learn Inkscape or CorelDraw? I like these choices because there are so many tutorials. The problem is, the vast majority of things you can do are not needed for us. What would you do, and what techniques should I focus on?

Bonus question...what tutorials do you reccomend?

Thank you!

[djreiswig]

What type of things are you drawing? If you are drawing mechanical parts, check out DraftSight.

[Greg_R]

I want to do family signs, and some art type stuff. I want to do some custom things to be more unique. I want to use 11-14 gauge steel.

[Scratch]

My vote is for Corel since I love it and it works great, but my vote shouldn't really count since I have no experience with Inkscape...

[tcaudle]

I have been using CoreDraw for Almost as long as its been out . I can do stuff in my sleep . I have taught classes in it I use it for lots of things because it imports almost every file type you can image and the word processing tools are great. For doing an illustration of a cut compete with color and shading to show to a customer is great. I have used it to layout ads, booklets, manuals, and 2D cut files. Its truly a versatile tool and will handle a hundred page document with photos and drawings (done in Corel) easily. All that being said: 90% of that is superfluous to what you need to cut plasma and most 2.5D routing. Coredraw has some drawbacks: It handles DXF rather poorly It won't run on anything but Windows. Newer version NEEDs later Windows versions to run. Its resource hungry and it has a bad habit of crashing (especially on large files) and leaving you with a blank document.

nkscape has matured into a really capable drawing package if you do not want to build mutli-page documents. It handles one page although you can have as many layers and objects per layer as you want. If I was to start today I would probably choose Inkscape . I am having to learn it and unlearn Corel . Wish me luck!

[DanM]

Neither sign up for Adobe creative suite and use AI.

[SegoMan DeSigns]

I posted this on another thread about the very same question:

I use CorelDraw 16, versions 17 &18 have more tutorials on Y/T. Check out Doug Green's tutorial channel and watch some of his vids.