CorelDraw - worth the investment?

[Patclem]

I'm kinda new to this plasma cutting thing. I use Inkscape, for the obvious reason that it's free. However, I picked up a copy of the CNCDXFFiles, and I need to modify, rotate, etc. Inkscape is doing all kinds of weird things. It loses paths if I rotate any of the files (such as squaring up a diamond). Sometimes when it exports a DXF, the file is inported into Sheetcam/Linux and it's shrunk / scaled VERY small.

I'm willing to spend money on CorelDraw if the ability to import DXF/SVG, modify, save and export as DXF (and cleanly import into Sheetcam/Linux) will be seamless.

I imagined some of you that arrived on CorelDraw have been down this same road. Thoughts are appreciated.

[WyoGreen]

I use CorelDraw and like it a lot. I have tried Inkscape and just can't get the hang of it, probably because I pretty much started out with CorelDraw. They are a bit different from in each other in how they work. You can sometimes get an older version of CorelDraw for cheaper than the newest version. Anymore I export from CorelDraw to Sheetcam as .svg files, they seem to work much better than the .dxf files.
The drawback with CorelDraw is they don't have a Linux version. So I design on my windows computer, and transfer it to my Linux computer to process the .svg file with Sheetcam. You can process it on the Windows computer thru Sheetcam, I just prefer to only have one copy of Sheetcam to keep up to date, and I like that to be the computer in my shop, which is Linux. Quite often I find myself changeing the tool table or whatever in Sheetcam in the shop, and I don't want to mess with remembering to make the same change in my office computer.

Not much more I can add, but if you have any questions, just ask. I'm sure several Inkscape users will chime in too with their view points.

Steve

[Gamelord]

I actually started with Corel long before I got into CNC....actually it was probably before plasma cutting was invented. LOL Anyways, the use of Corel for CNC was a natural for me. I really like Corel. If you are still learning then it may be good for you to download the free 30 day trial and see how you like it. Either program will work for you once you learn how to use them. Most people rely on Youtube for learning, both Inkscape and Corel has tons of youtube tutorials.

Hope that helps.

[motoguy]

I use Corel, and I like it. It handles a lot of file formats, which is great for conversion and sending/receiving files from customers. It also has a lot of videos on Youtube, which is handy. Corel seems to be lagging behind Illustrator for general usage, but seems to be one of the bigger games when it comes to vector/CAD stuff (once you get away from more dimensional programs, such as Solidworks, etc).