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ComputerTalk Magazine 4
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ART6
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1992-09-27
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╓───────────────╖
║ Windows Draw! ║
╙───────────────╜
by Tony Curro
When I was growing up there was a TV show in which an artist taught
you the fundementals of drawing pictures. Later there was Etch-A-Sketch,
which is sill popular today. These and many other products on the market
all have the same goal, which is to make you an artist.
Well in the electronic age we live in, we can become artists
without even getting dirty. There are many computer programs on the shelf
that will do just that. I was intrigued by a product I saw called
Micrografx Windows Draw!. What really caught my eye was the price. I
thought, "How much can such a inexpensive program do?" "It cannot compare
with the high-end products, can it?" Well to answer in a few short words.
You would be suprised and YES!
Windows Draw does more than it's price would indicate, and I found
it as good as the high-end products if not better. One reason it is so
good is because it is so easy to use. Within minutes you can start
'dabbling' with your masterpeice. Unless you work on the tutorial lessons,
and browse through the manual, you will not really get the true worth of
the package. But the learning curve is very small. I would venture to say
within a half-hour you should have a good grasp of the concepts of the
program.
I think the installation procedure takes longer than to learn the
program. A full installation requires 20MB of hard disk space; minimum
installation requires only 5MB of disk space. Full installation took about
20 minutes on my 386-33 system. The program comes with 2600 Clip Arts for
you to work with. When you start INSTALL it will show you the avaiable
space of the default drive. You can then switch drives until you have one
with enough space. Of course you do Microsoft Windows to use this product.
You can import and export TIFF, WPG, TXT and many other formats.
Once you have a graphic or text on the screen, you can manipulate it in a
varitey of ways. For example you may wish to have text wrap around a
graphic file. You may wish to have the text appear in an outline, shadow,
or mirror it. All these things are very easily done with Windows Draw.
There is also a section that shows you how to draw a curve, ellipse, pie
and others. I always have troule drawing a stright line in a graphic. By
holding the CTRL key as I drag across the screen you will ALWAYS draw a
straight line, whether it is horizontal or vertical.
I use a logo for my letterhead which show a chair. I have the
letters CTM across the back of the chair just like you would see DIRECTOR
in the back of the chair of a movie director. You can slant the text or
bold or italicize and so on. This took me less than 5 minutes to do.
Windows Draw is file and clipboard compatible with Micrografx
Designer, Micrografx Charisma, Aldus PageMaker, Ventura Publisher, PC
Paintbrush and many other Windows applications. It also works with
Adobes'Type Manager and Type Align.
Draw comes with extensive context-sensitive on-line help for all
facets of the program. If you click on the magnifying glass and press F1,
you will get help about that item. Click on the draw tool and press F1 to
get help for the tool and so on. The manual contains 17 mini-tutorials and
three-task oriented tutorials. Working through these will truly make you a
professional of Windows Draw.
Clicking on a graphic activates it and shows you 'handles' in the
box around the graphic. These handles allow you to control the size of the
graphic. Dragging a corner handle proportionally sizes the graphic.
Dragging a side or middle handle will re-size the graphic, but it will do
so non-proportinally.
Text and graphics can be combined in Windows Draw. In the
aforementioned item I created, both are separate. This means if I clicked
on the outside graphic and moved it, the text would stay there and vice
versa. By pressing F2 however, it selects all the objects that you can
then move as a group. You can even have the text or gaphics in different
colors. There is a vast array of palettes to choose from, or you can mix
your own. And you don't have to clean your hands afterwards!
I was sitting here working one evening around the witching hour,
and came across a problem. So I picked up the phone and called Tech.
Support. YES! At midnight. They have 24-hour technical support. Weekend
and holidays are different. Not everyone works from 9-5. I do, but that
is 9PM-5AM, or more likely 2AM, so it is nice to see people working when I
do. The technican was helpful and courteous.
I have been working with quite a few programs over the last months,
and I must say that I was pleased with the manual included with Windows
Draw. This manual was pretty well-structured, with explanations about the
contents of each chapter, which made zeroing in a specific thing much
easier, than having to search the Index or Table of Contents. The
Glosssary was another feature I liked. It expalins, in plain English, all
the various words and phrases pertaining to Windows Draw and Windows.
Some of you may want or need the high-end products like Micrografx
Designer or Corel Draw and others in that price range. In these cost
consicious times people look for an alternative. While Windows Draw may
not do some of the things that Desinger etal. will do, it does more than
it price warrants. It more than lives up to it's ad of: Fun, Friendly, and
Fast This is a program that should fit nicely in anyone's budget.
╓───────────────────────╖
║ Product Information ║
╟───────────────────────╢
║ Micrografx ║
║ Windows Draw! ║
╟───────────────────────╢
║ List Price $149.95 ║
╟───────────────────────╢
║ Micrografx Inc. ║
║ 1303 Arapaho ║
║ Richardson, TX 75081 ║
║ 800 733-3729 ║
╙───────────────────────╜