The CorelDraw 6 Suite

CorelDraw 6 is a suite of graphics and multimedia programs built around CorelDraw, Corel's flagship illustration and page layout product. Corel began selling CorelDraw as a suite during the product's third release, which included a relatively modest set of satellite programs. Corel dramatically expanded the suite's contents, and by the time CorelDraw 5 came to market, it was a broad and comprehensive suite for 2D graphics, presentations, and publishing.

The CorelDraw 6 suite is significantly different from its predecessors in two respects:

• CorelDraw 6 is a 32-bit implementation of CorelDraw (and of most of the other programs included in the suite). It is specifically targeted at the emerging Windows 95 market.
• CorelDraw 6 is not directed toward 2D graphics and the production of printed material. Instead, this version is aimed squarely at the 3D graphics and multimedia market.

The key changes that give CorelDraw 6 a 3D/multimedia spin are not in the core CorelDraw product. CorelDraw is still a 2D illustration and layout program, and satellite products handle the 3D and multimedia capabilities. Table 1 is a chart of the differences between the key programs in the CorelDraw 5 suite and the key programs included in the CorelDraw 6 suite.

What CorelDraw 6 has in common with the previous releases is that Corel acquired the satellite programs from other companies and integrated them into the CorelDraw suite. For example, CorelDream 3D is a customized version of Ray Dream 3D.

In the Lab
CorelDraw's operating system and hardware platform have always restrained the package. Corel's move to a 32-bit implementation addresses many of the performance and resource limitations of the product's previous versions. CorelDraw needs a system with a fast CPU, lots of memory, and lots of free hard disk space.

Corel's move to a 32-bit implementation does not improve overall performance. My tests indicate that CorelDraw version 6 provides a similar level of performance to CorelDraw version 5, which operates in a 16-bit Windows environment. This is actually good news for longtime CorelDraw users because it's the first major version change to CorelDraw that hasn't resulted in worse performance due to higher resource requirements.

Although the product literature and installation documentation do not mention Windows NT support, I was able to install and operate the CorelDraw 6 suite in an NT 3.51 environment with no problems or technical complications. However, one logistical complication is that you need nearly 200MB of disk space to install all the programs in the suite. If you don't have 200MB of disk space, you can run the programs from the CD-ROM disk and consume only about 40MB of disk. However, running the CorelDraw 6 suite from CD-ROM is impractical unless you have two CD-ROM drives: You can't access any of the clipart, fonts, or samples on the three additional CD-ROM disks because you can't switch CD-ROM disks while a CorelDraw program is running. Fortunately, you can opt to install some of the programs on the hard disk and run others from the CD-ROM to give yourself a balance between your hard disk capacity and your day-to-day needs.

The Main Event
CorelDraw is a vector-based drawing program with excellent prepress features, such as color separation, registration marking, and positive/negative image generation. CorelDraw also offers a modest range of page layout capabilities, including support for paragraph-oriented styles and the ability to incorporate bitmapped graphics (e.g., photos and screen shots). CorelDraw does, however, fall short of being a full-featured desktop publishing tool, such as QuarkXPress or Aldus Pagemaker.

As you can see in screen 1, the CorelDraw version 6 interface contains a horizontal toolbar and a vertical toolbox. The toolbox is deceptively simple: Most of the options in it have an additional "fly-out" toolset that lets you refine the operation you want. For example, the text tool (the "A" tool) has a fly-out that lets you enter either simple artistic text or formatted paragraph text.

CorelDraw version 5 users will notice some subtle changes in the version 6 interface. First, Corel reorganized the toolbox to contain a new polygon tool and a dimension line tool (the tool above the rectangle tool), which used to be a fly-out option on the line drawing tool. Second, version 6 now lets you concurrently work with multiple files. Third, all Help, configuration, and dialog boxes now conform to the Windows 95 user interface.