Vector Drawing Program

[Extrarius]

I'm looking for an inexpensive vector drawing program that allows you to do the following:
1) Specify grid size in real-world units (I need a 0.1 inch grid)
2) Create text objects using any font on my system in any available size of any color with any other properties the font supports (bold, italic, etc).
3) Align text objects to the grid using the baseline of the text for the y coordinate and any of {left, center, right} for the x coordinate.
4) Draw rectangles and lines that snap to the grid.
5) Print exactly what the program draws on the screen.

I've tried everythign free I could find and several very expensive programs at school but nothing seems to support all of those simple conditions.
Any features above and beyond those listed above would be great too, but really all I need are those 5.

 

[bustacaptx]

Originally posted by: Extrarius
I'm looking for an inexpensive vector drawing program that allows you to do the following:
1) Specify grid size in real-world units (I need a 0.1 inch grid)
2) Create text objects using any font on my system in any available size of any color with any other properties the font supports (bold, italic, etc).
3) Align text objects to the grid using the baseline of the text for the y coordinate and any of {left, center, right} for the x coordinate.
4) Draw rectangles and lines that snap to the grid.
5) Print exactly what the program draws on the screen.

I've tried everythign free I could find and several very expensive programs at school but nothing seems to support all of those simple conditions.
Any features above and beyond those listed above would be great too, but really all I need are those 5.

CorelDraw will do just about all of those, if I'm not mistaken. In fact, those should all be common features in most vector drawing progs.

 

[Extrarius]

You would think they would, but I haven't seen #4 anywhere and many of the inexpensive/free programs are missing one or more of the other features.

I've tried a corel vector drawing program and I couldn't figure out #4, but maybe I just missed it.

 

[Brazen]

Inkscape

 

[Extrarius]

How do you snap text to the grid by it's baseline in InkScape?
For that matter, how do you snap anything to the grid? The documentation doesn't cover that anywhere. Plenty of occurances of 'snap' and a few of 'grid', but none of those talking about snapping to a grid in any way.

 

[sunase]

Menubar : File->Document Preferences->Grid -> Snap points to grid
F8 (text)
click on document and type some text
Shift+F6 (Drawing curves/lines)
draw a curve/line
select both text and curve
Menubar: Text->Put on Path

 

[Extrarius]

When I select "Text -> Put on Path" from the menu, nothing happens.

 

[Traire]

Originally posted by: Extrarius
You would think they would, but I haven't seen #4 anywhere and many of the inexpensive/free programs are missing one or more of the other features.

I've tried a corel vector drawing program and I couldn't figure out #4, but maybe I just missed it.

You did miss it. Corel Draw will snap objects to the grid no problem.

 

[Extrarius]

Actually I typoed, I meant #3 - text always snaps either by its bounding box or by where you click on every program I've used, which means it looks like crap when you put it over a line because the line is under the tail of 'g's and other characters that go below the baseline.

 

[Bona Fide]

Wow...I'm not sure if Illustrator even supports that. Then again I haven't looked through all the features yet.

 

[jjones]

CorelDraw does all that and much more. It's not free of course.

You can download a trial version of the Corel Graphics Suite from corel.com.

 

[Extrarius]

Could you explain the steps to make text snap to the grid on it's baseline? I can use CorelDraw at a computer lab at school, so while not an optimal choice (because I can't just open it up whenever I want to work on stuff), if it does what I need I can try using it again.

 

[jjones]

Easy. In the View menu select grid to show the grid and select snap to grid. Type your text in whatever size you want. Then use the pick tool (this is the arrow tool that performs the same function as the hand tool for other graphic programs) and place the text wherever you want. Corel will snap to the baseline, the center or the top line of the text anywhere on the grid that you like.

Edit: You can snap to other objects you have made as well but this feature is limited to snapping to the center of the text. If you make a line, the center of the text will snap to the line. Also, you can snap to guidelines but that is more like what you don't want, which is to the center of the text or the bounding box of the text.

 

[Extrarius]

Is there some way to tell it where to snap? Having it snap to all 3 places simultaneously (whichever is closer to a snap point) sounds like it'll be really difficult to align the text the way I want.

 

[jjones]

No, not that I'm aware of but you're overcomplicating it in your mind. It is really easy. I just did it using text of various sizes and a grid pattern of .1" no problem at all.

You can use your mousewheel to zoom in real close if needed to get the right alignment, but like I said, it's very easy to do.

 

[Extrarius]

I'm downloading the trail of corel draw, and in the flash tour it lists text alignment choices as a new feature in v 12. That could be why I couldn't find it in my school's version, as they have something older.

 

[jjones]

That could be. Corel has always had text alignment but the baseline and top line could be new for v12; it probably just did center and bounding box previously but since that's the same as the guidelines snap, it's kind of redundant. I went from v10 to v12 and skipped v11 altogether (heard it wasn't very good). Hope it works for you.

 

[Extrarius]

Well, I just got the demo installed, and to my dissapointment the only way to align text to it's baseline is apparently to align it to a path, with is going to make it a REAL pain. There is an option 'Align to Baseline', but it appears to do nothing.

At first I thought it was working as you say, snapping to the baseline automatically, but as soon as I had a letter with an underhang it only snaps to the top, buttom, or center.

Did you test with a 0.1 inch font (7.2 pt) on a 0.1 inch grid? That's what I'm using and it's not working as mentioned above.

The only thing I can find in help is to align it to another object using the baseline, which isn't any better than just putting the text on a path. The idea was to be able to quickly arrange a LOT of text for a form-like page to get it to look exactly as desired. (I'm trying to design a Pen & Paper RPG character sheet.)

 

[Extrarius]

Ok, well I figured out how to text baseline alignment working in InkScape: You have to just click with the text tool instead of drawing a box. If you draw a box, the text snaps to the bounding box only (which isn't neccessarily the box you drew), but if you just click and type text, the text will snap on the top, bottom, and baseline. Not as convenient as it could be, but far better than nothing at all which is what I'd otherwise have.