White Box Engraving - 10% Grayscale

Q: Corel X5 is taking objects that are filled white (shouldn't be engraved at all) and giving about a 10% grayscale to them.

A: Be sure to turn color management off. Tools>Color Management>Default Settings>Presets>Simulate Color Management Off

Alternatively, if you need to use color management for other purposes, change the Default Settings (in the path above) to Document Settings.

Laser: PVC

Identifying PVC in Plastics: http://vimeo.com/1615418?pg=embed&sec=1615418.

Corel: F8 Key

Problem:

Help! I've lost my menu/color pallette/etc. in CorelDraw.

Solution:

Shut down Corel. Hold down the F8 key as you're starting Corel again. Answer "yes" when it asks if you want to overwrite the current workspace with the factory default.

Corel: Arial Font

Problem:

All of a sudden, our Arial Black has become italicized and the Italics box is grayed out so that I can't change it back.

Solution (or "band-aid", in this case) -- from Roy Brewer:

I do not understand why this is happening and why it is almost always Arial, but you are not the "lone ranger." Here's the problem description. Arial is not just one font; there is actually a font file for normal, bold, italic, bold italic (and possibly a few others). Your Windows is losing the pointer to the Arial Normal.

Here's the solution: find the Arial font on your CorelDRAW CD, your Windows CD or on another PC in your organization and copy that into the C:\WINDOWS\FONTS folder on the PC you are experiencing the issue. Windows may respond with "Already installed, do you want to cover it up?" say yes if this occurs. Windows may, however, respond with "Already installed, you have to delete the old file and re install the new file." If this occurs, you may have already fixed the problem, try it. Not yet fixed? Then (assuming you have found a replacement) delete the old font from the folder and copy the replacement; you'll be back in business.