Documentation

FAQs

 

I’m trying to install onto Windows Vista, the program seems to install correctly, but I can’t run it.

You need to have Service Pack 2 on the Corel Designer Technical Suite 12 installed in order to run on Windows Vista.  No prior versions of the software are supported on Microsoft’s new operating system.

If you purchased before March of 2007, your disk will be labeled as version 3.0.  You will need to download the service pack off our website:  http://www.visualimpactimaging.com/support/downloads/index.htm 

Select and download the Service Pack 2, also listed as “(Vista Support)”.  Once the file is downloaded, you can open the file to install the service pack, and provide compatibility with Windows Vista.

If you purchased after March of 2007, your disk 1 will be labeled as version 3.01.  You can insert the disk, cancel out of the installer program, open “My Computer”, right click on the “VI Install” CD, open the Service Pack 2 folder, and run the “CDTS12_SP1” file directly from the CD.

 

Help! I lost one (or more) of my toolbars and I can’t get it back.

Within both the Corel Photo-Paint and Designer program, you can right click on a toolbar to bring up a list of the toolbars that are available.  You can select each one individually to turn them on or off, allowing you to customize the workspace.

If you prefer, you can also set the program back to the defaults by holding the “F8” key while starting either program until you get a dialog box asking if you wish to overwrite the workspace with the factory default.  At this time, you can let go of the “F8” key, and press “Yes” in order to reset the program back to the original workspace layouts.  If you are in Designer and this didn’t set the program back the way you expected, please see “Why in Designer don’t I see the buttons that the Tutorial Manual is Describing”.

 

Why are my objects popping around the screen when I try to move them around?

Occasionally objects within Photo Paint or Designer will start to move erratically.

First, try saving the file as a different type, closing it, and reopening it.  For Photo-Paint, you can save it as a PSD or CPT file, whichever it was not previously saved as.  For Designer, save it as a CMX or DES file, whichever it was not previously saved as.  After closing the file, and reopening it from the saved file, the issue should resolve.

Second, if the above step does not work, you can reset the workspace to the defaults. To do this, save your current file, close out of the program, and hold the “F8” key while loading the program. When the dialog asking about overwriting your workspace with the factory defaults appears, let go of the “F8” key, and press “Yes”. This will reset the workspace back to the way it was when you first installed.

 

How do I reset my VI Customizations?

Close any Corel products that are currently open, as well as the VI Library.

Go to the “Start” menu and select “Run”. Type in “%appdata%” to the box, and press “OK”.

In the folder that opens up, open the Corel Folder.  Right click on the “Corel Designer 12” folder, and select Delete.

Now insert Disk 1 into your computer’s CD drive, and when the installer pops up, select “Next” to go to step 2.

On step 2, uncheck the “Complete Installation” option, then uncheck all of the remaining options except the “Visual Impact Customizations”, and select “Next”.

On step 3, select your operating system, and select Next.

On step 4 press the “Run Setup” button.This will only take a short amount of time, after which point you can press Finish.

Now your Photo-Paint and Designer programs are fully set back to their default settings from when they were first installed.

 

How do I add a “Before” image to my design?

From Photo Paint, open up your design.  From the File Menu, select Import.  Locate the “Before” image, and select Import.  The image will appear as a small thumbnail.  Click once on your design, and it will be placed onto your design as an object at full size, typically covering the entire design.  Select a corner node from the before image object, and scale it down and move it as you would any other object you bring into your photo.  You can then also use the Text Tool to add the word “Before” on top of the imported image.

 

How can I place a new item behind a pre-existing item in my photo?

In order to place a new item behind an existing item, you will first make the existing item into an object.  Select the background by clicking on it with the object pick tool, or selecting the background layer from the object manager.  Use the Freehand Mask tool to mask off the area of the existing item.  Go to the “Object” menu, select “Create”, and then “Object: Copy Selection”.  This will bring the existing item into a new object, which will by default be on the top most layer, and you can now place your new item behind the new object using the layers functionality.

 

How do I add drop shadows to my image?

To add a drop shadow to an object, first select the object you would like to have cast a shadow. Next click on the “Drop Shadow” button from the Visual Impact Toolbar on the left of your screen. 

Now you can click on the object, drag out the drop shadow in the direction you wish to have the shadow appear, and let go of the mouse button when you have it in place.  There will be two triangles next to an arrow from the object to the end of the drop shadow.  One will adjust the level of transparency of the shadow, and the other will adjust the amount of feathering on the shadow as you reach the edges.  If you prefer, you can also edit the values directly on the second toolbar at the top of the screen. The toolbar will also make it possible to change the color of the drop shadow, allowing you to match with colored lights, or blend with a background object more closely.

 

How do I convert my custom library files from my old version into the new version?

First, we will create a folder for our new custom library of converted images.  Open “My Computer”, then open the “C” drive, “Program Files”, “VILIB”, and “Catalogs”.  Next create a folder for your library, right click, select New, Folder, and give the folder a unique name.

Open Corel Photo-Paint, and create a new blank document, then go to the “File” Menu and select “Batch Process”.

On the “Batch Process” screen that appears, go to “Add Files”.  Locate the images that you wish to import into the new version of the program.  You can select multiple items at a time by holding the shift key to select a range, or control key to select individual items.  When you have them all selected, press “Open”.

Click on “Add Script”, and the “Load Script” window appears.Insert Disk 2 from the 9.5 library.  In the “Look In” box, locate the CD, open the drive, open “Tiff Conversions”, and select “Plant Fixings”, then click “Open”.

Select “Browse”, and navigate to the folder you created in the first step, open the “C” drive, “Program Files”, “VILIB”, “Catalogs”, your folder name, then press OK.

Make sure that the “Save As Type” is set to “PSD – Adobe Photoshop”.  Finally click Play. This will open each of your files and save them to the new folder in the correct format for your library.

 

How do I clone objects in DESIGNER?

The Clone button allows the user to copy an object so that is linked to a master object or image area.  Most changes to the master are automatically applied to its clones, unless you change the clone directly. This technique allows for the duplication of a plant symbols while reducing the overall file size.

1.Open the Corel DESIGNER 12 program.  Open a new page.  Drag and drop a plant symbol from the Visual Impact Library.

2.Go to the “Tools” menu, select “Options”,  and click on “Customizations” in the “Options” window.

3.Expand the “Customizations” tab and select “Commands”.

4.Within the “Commands” window, select “Edit” in the drop down menu.

5.Scroll down until you find the “Clone” icon.  Drag and drop the “Clone” icon onto the DESIGNER page.  Notice that the “Clone” button appears in its own toolbar.

6.Place the “Clone” command onto the left toolbar.  Drag and drop the “clone” command onto the left toolbar.

7.Return back the DESIGNER page and click on the plant symbol.  The selector boxes appear around the plant symbol.

8.Click on the “Clone” button on your left vertical toolbar.  Place the cloned plant symbol into position on the DESIGNER page.

***You cannot clone a clone.

***Clone symbols are exported to the Estimator.

 

Why in Designer don’t I see the buttons that the Tutorial Manual is decribing?

The most common reason that Designer does not have the same buttons and layout as described in the Tutorial Manual or shown on the Training and Reference CD is that you are in a different workspace within Designer.  If you are already in the program, go to the “Tools” menu, and select “Options”.  Within this “Options” dialog, click on the top left where it says “Workspace” in order to enable the workspace settings to be displayed on the right.  Click in the box where it says “Micrografx Designer”.  The program will take a few seconds to switch into the new workspace, which should match the settings within the Tutorial Manual and the Training and Reference CD.  If this does not appear to resolve the issue, also see the “How do I reset my VI Customizations?” question.

 

What are these blue flashing lines on Designer?

The blue lines that you will see within Designer are usually the Dynamic Guidelines. These are useful to help line up your drawing and objects with other points within your design.  If you wish, you can turn them off by going to the “Tools” menu, select “Dynamic Guides”, and uncheck “Dynamic Guides On”.

 

How can I create my own templates in Designer?

You can either start by selecting a new blank document (“File”, “New”) or starting with an existing template (“File”, “Templates”).  Now you can change the settings for this file, such as the paper size, orientation, and unit of measure.  You can alter the scaling by right clicking on the ruler and selecting “Ruler Setup”, then select the “Edit Scale” button to alter the scaling for the template.  Press the “OK” button, and then again the “OK” button, and you have made the changes.  Now go to “File”, and “Save As”, and make sure that the type is set as “CDT – Corel Designer Template”.  If you start with an existing template, you can fill in the title block as well, or if you start with a new document, you can copy the title block onto your new template.  Now you can use this template each time, and have your settings ready to go each time you start a new design.

 

How do I use my CAD files with Designer?

The Drawing Interchange Format (DXF) is a tagged data representation of the information contained in an AutoCAD drawing file. The Drawing Interchange format is a native file format of AutoCAD.  It has become a standard for exchanging CAD drawings and is supported by many CAD applications.  The Drawing Interchange format is vector-based and supports up to 256 colors.

·The Data Exchange File (DXF) filter is supported in AutoCAD 2.5, 2.6, R9, R10, R11, R13, R14, and R2000 (R15).

·AutoCAD 2000/2002 is supported.

·Layers are retained on import and export.

 

Exporting an AutoCAD Data Interchange Format file

EARTHSCAPES saves drawings in a vector format accepted by computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) programs and devices, such as AutoCAD and certain computer-driven sign and glass cutters.

·Only the outlines of objects are exported.

·Filled objects with no outlines have an outline appended to them on export.

·All text is exported using the AutoCAD default font, txt.shx.

 

Importing an AutoCAD Data Interchange Format file

The DXF filter imports vector graphics created in AutoCAD 12, AutoCAD 13, AutoCAD 14, and AutoCAD 2000/2002.

·If a DXF file is too complex to import into EARTHSCAPES, configure your AutoCAD output device as an HP7475 plotter and perform a plot-to-file of the drawing. Then you should be able to import this plot file using the HPGL import filter.  Newer versions of AutoCAD allow you to create EPS files.

·Corel graphics applications try to center the imported image. The image is scaled down if the coordinates are larger than the maximum page size available in EARTHSCAPES — 150' x 150'.

·Solid and trace entities are filled.

·A point is imported as an ellipse of minimum size.

·Files exported as "Entities only" may come into the VI application incorrectly due to a lack of header information.

·Various justifications on text entries may not be preserved. Normal text placement (no justification) works best.

·If the DXF file contains a font that is not on the user's computer, PANOSE font matching dialog box will let the user replace the font with an available one.

 

How do I use Designer for my irrigation plans?

Open the VI Library, select “Architectural Symbols”, and find the sprinkler heads you want to use.

Drag one to the screen, and using the “Object Field Editor”, enter the Name, Price, Descriptions, and Tax. Example: Torro: $25.00 : sprinkler head: N

After you finished with the properties you will want to go to file/close data manager.

To copy the sprinkler head just activate the image/ hold down the “D” key and it will duplicate. Be careful because it will go pretty fast!  You can also duplicate by activating the image, hold down the control key and move the image to make an additional copy/copies.

Making lines:

Simply use the line tool and draw out the line length that you want.  Once again you will open the Object field editor and enter in PCV length, price/ ¼ inch pipe/ tax etc.

To get exact line lengths:  Have the line activated go to object on the top tool bar/ then go to

area/ perimeter / volume and it will give you the exact line length.  You can do the same with curved lines, just be careful not to close in the curve because you will not be able to get the line length. To copy the line, activate it and then hold down the control key and you can make several copies.

The properties will stay the same for each line until you change the length and the property requirements.

When you are finished, or as you are working on your design and want to review costs you can go to objects/list save as a CSV file.

Using the estimator you can go to go to the file and import it into the program, and open the estimate. Take some time and play with this!

 

Why can I only hear the Training and Reference CD videos, and not see them?

You need to have the Tech Smith Capture Codec installed.  Insert the Training and Reference CD to your drive.  Open My Computer, right click on the “VI Training” disk, and select “open”.  Open the Camplay folder, and open the file “TSCC” or “TSCC.exe”.  This will install the codec to view the videos.

 

Help, when I insert Disk 1 to install the program, I get an error message about a missing language file.

Most of the time this is caused when you do not have the latest service pack installed on Microsoft Windows XP.  To check, you can right click on “My Computer” on the desktop, and select “Properties”.  Under system, you should see Service Pack 2 listed.If you do not, please go to the Windows Update feature of your operating system, and update to Service Pack 2.

If this does not resolve the issue, or if you cannot upgrade to the latest service pack of Windows, you can open “My Computer”, right click on “VI Install CD”, and select “Open”.  Open the folder called “Registry”.  Right click on the file called “MSCOMCTL.OCX”, and select “Copy”.  Close this window.

 

Open “My Computer” again, open the “C” drive (often called Local Disk), then “Windows”, and finally “System32”.  If at any time you get a message about the files being hidden, select the option to show the files.  After opening the “System32” folder, you can right click, and select “Paste”.  Close this window.

 

From the “Start” menu, select “Run”.  Type “regsvr32 mscomctl.ocx”.  You should receive a message about the registration being successful.  At this point you can remove and reinsert the disk to restart the installer program.

 

I opened my library program, but I don’t see any images in the library.

Most commonly, you simply need to select one of the subjects.  There is a drop down box that will say “Select Subject”.  Click on this box to select between the installed subjects in the library, and you will find the images within each subject.

If you do not have any subjects listed, see “How do I install or reinstall my library?”

 

How do I install or reinstall my library?

Go to the “Start” menu, select “All Programs”, then “Visual Impact Library”, and “Library Install Tool”.Insert Disk 2 or Disk 3, then select “Continue”.  If you wish to install all of the libraries on the current CD, select the “Select all subjects” option.  If you wish to install only a few of the libraries, you can shift click each of the individual libraries that you wish to install.  At this point, you can select install, and the selected libraries will begin installing to your hard drive.

 

When this disk is completed, the installer will inform you of the number of images installed, and prompt you if you wish to continue installation from Disk 3 (even if you just installed from Disk 3).  If you do not wish to install from another disk, you can select “No”, and the installation will be complete.  If you wish to install from another disk, such as Disk 3, you can swap the CDs to the next CD, select “Yes”,then follow the instructions above as for the prior disk.Uncheck and re-check the “Select all subjects” if you wish to install all of the subjects on this second disk.

 

I reinstalled my program, but the Estimator doesn’t appear to be working.

Insert Disk 1 to your CD drive, and close the installer program when it opens.  Open “My Computer”, right click on “VI Install CD”, then select “Open”.  Open the “Estimator” folder, and run the “Reinstall.exe” program.  Follow the onscreen prompts to finish installation of the Estimator.

 

Why do I have two shortcuts for the Estimator on the desktop?

Most likely you have had to reinstall the Estimator via the reinstall method described above.  You can simply delete either of the two icons on the desktop, as you do not need both.

 

I can’t find the Application Launcher icon in Photo-Paint.  There’s no image of a red ‘L’, but I do see a rocket ship icon.

Your Visual Impact customizations are not installed.  See the “Reinstalling Visual Impact Customizations” topic.

 

I can’t open my image file.

Verify the image type that you are trying to open. Most often they should have one of the following extensions : “JPG”, “GIF”, “BMP”, “PSD”, “CPT”, “TIF”, “TGA”, “PP5”.  Also verify the program you are using to open the program.You should be using Photo-Paint to work on image designs and Designer for your Site Plans.

Common mistakes include saving an email message rather than the contained photo to be opened, or trying to open a Microsoft Word document “.DOC”.

 

I’ve finished installing, now what are all of these different programs used for?

For your photo imaging, taking photos of your client’s property and modifying it to give an image of what your design will look like when completed, you will be using the Corel Photo-Paint program.

For your 2D site plans, you will be using the Corel Designer program.

 

Alongside each of these programs, you will be using the VI Library to drag and drop images and symbols onto your photos and designs.  You can access the library from the Application Launcher (Looks like a red “L” on top of a book”

 

For your estimates, you will be exporting your information from Designer, and importing it into the Estimator program.

 

When I open a large photo, or have a large design, the program seems to get slow.

First, verify how much memory you have installed in your computer.  If you are running towards the minimum recommended of 512 MB, you may want to consider increasing the amount of RAM in your computer, especially if you regularly work with very large designs, or very high resolution images.  Increasing your RAM to 1 GB or higher should resolve many issues related to memory space.

 

Another place to look is the program’s memory allocation.By default the program will only use 25% of the physical RAM to leave room for other programs.  You can increase this by going to the “Tools” menu, select “Options”, select the “Memory” option on the left list (listed under “Workspace”), and increase the percentage under Available RAM.  Increasing this value will use more memory for the Corel program, but will leave less available for other programs, so if you are working with many programs open at once, you may notice that it will be slower to switch to those programs.  You probably shouldn’t go beyond about 60 or 75% of your RAM for Corel, as it may deprive the Windows OS of needed RAM.

 

When I go to print my photo, it doesn’t fit on the page.

When you go to the print dialog, go to the “Layout” tab, and select “Fit to page”.  This will reduce the image or design down to fit on a single page.

 

When I go to print my design in Designer, it doesn’t print.It appears to be spooling, but for a very long time.

On very large designs, or complicated designs, you will want to rasterize the image in order to print efficiently.  Within the print dialog, go to the “Misc” tab, and check “Rasterize entire page” at the bottom left.  Then set the DPI to something reasonable such as 300, or 150.  This will essentially pre-render the image prior to sending it to the printer and avoid overloading it with too much information.

 

Why is there a blue line around my entire photo?

The blue object indicator line will be around your entire photo when you have a selected object taking up the entire photo.

This frequently happens when the background image is left as an object rather than as a background layer.  Other symptoms include being able to drag the entire background image around on the screen.  In order to set this as the background, you can right click the object and select “Combine”, then “Combine with Background”.

 

Otherwise, you may have an object which is as large or larger than your photo.  Other symptoms include seeing only a small portion of an imported image.  Drag the object diagonally until you can see the corner, and then you can resize the object down.  You may need to bring the object back onto the screen and repeat this process if you have an extremely large object.

 

Why won’t my clone / fill tool work?

The clone and fill tools are restricted in their use by any active masks, only allowing them to affect areas within any active mask.  If the “Clear Mask” button is not greyed, then there is an active mask on your image.  You can also turn on and off the overlay in the “Mask” menu, to see in red where the current mask will prevent editing.  Clearing the mask will resolve this issue.  If you do not have a mask on, you may need to rerun the customizations.  See “How do I reset my VI Customizations?”

 

Why is my texture tool placing mulch over my plants?

The clone and fill tools also are designed to work on the active layer.  If you are trying to put down mulch for example, you typically want to have the background layer selected.  The clone and fill tools will affect which ever layer is active.  The easiest way to tell if an object is selected is to look for the blue object indicator line, or to look in the object manager docker to see which layer is highlighted as active.  Use the Object Pick Tool to select the background layer, or click on the background of the image to activate the background layer.

 

When I load my picture in Photo-Paint, I only see a small portion.

The default setting for image sizes when loading them into Photo-Paint is to view them at 100%.  For very large photos, this may mean that you see only a small portion of the image.  You can go to the zoom box and select “To Fit” in order to view the entire image at once.

 

To change the default setting, go to the “Tools” menu and select “Options”.  Under workspace on the left, select General.  For “Opening Zoom”, you can change this option to “Best Fit” to cause all opened images to be opened to fit in the screen.

 

I changed some of the application settings in Photo-Paint / Designer, but when I open the program the next time, they have reverted to their prior settings.

In order to assure that your settings are saved, close out of the program correctly by selecting “Exit” from the “File” menu.  This allows the program to close out gracefully and save your changes.  Also keep in mind that you can reset all of the programs’ settings back to the defaults at any time.  See “Reinstalling Visual Impact Customizations”.

 

How can I use a different texture in the Texture Tool or Fill Tool?

Double-click on the “Fill” icon on your Visual Impact Toolbar, select the texture button (third button, pink and purple), then select “Edit”.  Select “Load”, and navigate to the image of your choice.  Select Open, then “OK” twice.  You are now ready to use the texture tool or fill tool with this texture.  The texture will also be saved within the drop down listing unless you use the delete button to remove it, allowing you to easily come back to the texture, or customize the list to your needs.

 

When re-installing the program I get a message about an error registering dll’s.

Because the program has been installed previously, there can been some files that are already in place correctly, and in use by the operating system.  You can safely pass through these messages without any problems.

 

What file formats should I use to send images to my customers or a print shop?

First make sure that your finished design is saved as a “CPT” so that you can come back later to edit it as necessary.

Next, go to the “File” menu,and select “Save As”.  From the file type list, select either “JPG” or “BMP”.  These file types are very portable, and good quality.  The “JPG” will be noticeably smaller, and is usually preferred.  You will get a message about the layers being merged with the background, to which you can select “OK”.

 

Alternatively, you can save the file as a “PDF” by selecting “Publish to PDF”, and saving the file as normal.

 

Any of the file formats are very portable, but do not allow for editing, so make sure that you save the original as a “CPT” so that you can go back and make changes if necessary.

 

What file formats should I use to send my site plans to my customers or a print shop?

For Designer, we will first save the original as a “DES” so that we can reopen it and edit the layers.

Next, go to the “File” menu and select “Publish to PDF”.  This is probably the best format for designs.  If you need a different format, you can select “Export” from the “File” menu, and in “Save As Type” select “BMP” or “JPG”.  These file formats will generally be larger or less clear than “PDF”, and are not as recommended when possible.

These file formats do not allow you to edit, so make sure that you save the original as a “DES” in case you need to come back and make changes.

 

I’m trying to save my image, and getting a message about combining the layers with the background.

This message appears when you try to save the image into a format which does not support layers.  Most frequently this is because you are trying to save over top of your original photo that you took with your camera, or trying to save over the tutorial house in the library.  As a good procedure, you should upon opening a brand new photo, immediately select “Save As” from the “File” menu, and save as a “CPT” file.  This way when you use the “Save” button you will save into a format that will keep all of your layers intact and editable.

 

My tutorial house has my changes that I made the last time I did the tutorial, how can I get it back?

This happens when you open the tutorial house and use the save button without first selecting to “Save As” and save as a new file, preferably a “CPT”.In order to replace it, you can selectively reinstall only the “Tutorial” subject.  See “How do I Install or Reinstall the VI Library”.

 

My segment readout appears to be incorrect in Designer.

Service Pack 1 resolved an issue with the segment readout values being incorrect.  This service pack is available from our website at: http://www.visualimpactimaging.com/support/downloads/index.htm.

 

Also see “How do I see if I need Service Pack 1?”

 

My tutorial manual doesn’t appear to match up with the program.

Some of the early versions of the tutorial manual were not correctly updated to match the newest version of the program.  Please download the newest version here to make sure that you have the most recent version.

 

How can I see the length of the lines I’m drawing in Designer.

There should be a readout at the bottom bar of Designer that lists how long your currently drawn line is.  If it is not there, it’s possible that you do not have Service Pack 1 installed, see “How do I see if I need Service Pack 1?”.

 

If you have the service pack installed, but do not have the readout status bar, go to the “Tools” menu and select “Options”.  On the left, under “Workspace”,find “customization”, and then “Commands”. From the drop down menu, select “Status Bar”, find “Object Information” from the listbox, and drag it to the bottom status bar to place it onto the bottom bar.

 

How do I see if I need Service Pack 1?

In order to check if the service pack has already been installed, open Designer, select “Help”,  and select “About Corel Designer”.  Look at the last three digits of the version number.  If it’s less than 479, you need to install Service Pack 1.  It is available on our website for download: http://www.visualimpactimaging.com/support/downloads/index.htm.

 

How do I see if I need Service Pack 2?

If you are not running on Windows Vista, you do not need Service Pack 2.  If the program gives you a message on Windows Vista about needing to run as an administrator, then you need to install Service Pack 2.  The Service Pack is available from our website:

http://www.visualimpactimaging.com/support/downloads/index.htm.

 

I get a message in my custom library subject that “One or more could not be loaded”.

One or more files within the custom subject have been moved or deleted.  This can happen if a file that you added to a custom subject was on a CD, network drive that is no longer available, or if the file has been renamed, moved, or deleted from the local drive.  It is not recommended to add files from places other than the local hard drive into the library, and it is important not to move the files manually without deleting them from the subject.

 

If you can replace the file back to its original location, the message will resolve.  At this point, you can delete the file from the subject.  See “How do I delete a file from a custom subject?”.

 

If you cannot replace the file, you may need to delete the subject altogether and create it from scratch in order to resolve the message.Go into C:Program FilesVILIBCatalogs, then open the folder corresponding to the catalog the subject is in.  Next delete the SBJ file that corresponds to the corrupted subject.  This will not delete the images themselves, but rather only the subject referencing them.

 

In order to prevent these issues from happening, try to keep all of your images that you use in your custom library in a particular location, such as a specific folder in the “My Documents” folder. This can help prevent accidental deletion or renaming.  Also make sure that if you do want to remove a file from the library that you use the correct deletion methods, see “How do I delete a file from a custom subject?”

 

How do I delete a file from a custom subject?

In order to properly remove a file from a custom subject, right click on the icon of the image within the subject and select delete.  Once you have deleted it in this manner from any of the subjects it was added to, you can safely delete the file itself.

 

When using the library, I get a message about a “Missing Thumbnail”.

If the file that is listed as missing a thumbnail is one of the default library items, you can simply reinstall the subject that it is in.  See “How do I install or reinstall my library?”.

If the file is one of your custom objects for Designer, it is most likely because the file was saved with the built in SVG saving functionality rather than the custom save functionality.  Using Designer, create a new, blank design, select “File”, then “Import”, and navigate to the file listed as missing a thumbnail.  Select the file, select import, and then place the symbol on the design.  Using the object pick tool, select the object and press the second icon on the top toolbar that looks like a disk.  Its tooltip should say “SaveImages.Main.SaveShapes”.  In the dialog box that follows, save this object over the SVG that you just loaded.  This procedure will correctly create the thumbnail needed to view the SVG within the library.

 

Can I add other items into the Application Launcher?

Yes!  You can drag the icon of any program onto the application launcher button to add it into the Application Launcher.  For example, you could place the Estimator into the Application Launcher, and have it easily available from either Photo-Paint or Designer.

 

My program seems to be behaving erratically or slowly.

Sometimes the configuration files for Designer and Photo-Paint can become corrupted.  First try resetting the workspace to the defaults by holding the “F8” key when loading the program until a dialog box comes up.  Then when prompted, tell the program to reset the workspace back to the defaults, and resolve the problems caused by the corrupt workspace.

 

See also “How do I reset my VI Customizations?”

 

How do I …? (Usage & Techniques)

Remember to check out the Training and Reference CD for many different methods for using the program.  Need to know how to insert an object behind something already in the photo, or how to add a new bush into your library?  The Training and Reference CD is by far the best place to look at how to do almost anything in the Earthscapes package.

 

How do I use the automatic backup feature?

Because the unexpected can happen at any time, and your work is important, we recommend turning on the automatic backup feature of the program.Select “Options” from the “Tools” menu, under “Workspace” choose “Save”, and check the “Auto-save every” option.  You can then change how often the program will automatically save your work, as well as to what location to save the files.  Generally we recommend every 10 minutes for your autosave feature, and the default file save location is usually good.

 

If for some reason your computer or the program crashes, the next time you open the program, you will be automatically prompted to open the auto-save version of the file. You can then open that file instead of the last version that you saved.If you wish to keep this version, you will want to save it to your normal save location before you continue working on the file.

 

I was installing my library, but when I went to do the second library disk (Disk 3), it didn’t seem to install.

When switching from the first library disk to the second library disk, if you do not uncheck and re-check the “Select All Subjects” button, no subjects will be selected on the second disk. This will cause no subjects to be loaded from the second disk.In order to continue loading from the second disk (Disk 3), see “How do I install or reinstall my library?”.

 

What size should my images be in order to edit them in Photo-Paint?

Any image taken with a 4 megapixel or higher camera should give you sufficient size and resolution for a good quality editable image.  In other terms, the image should be at least 7 to 10 inches at 72 DPI.To verify your image size, you can go to the “File” menu, select “Document Properties”, and see the current DPI and size of your image.  Larger or higher resolution images will provide greater detail, but will also take up more memory and disk space.  If your image is smaller or at very low resolution, then you may find that the overall image quality will suffer, as the objects you drop onto your photo from the library will have to be downsampled to match the original image’s resolution and size.

 

What size should I save my cut objects as when I place them into my custom library?

Generally you will want to keep them as large as reasonable, in order to preserve as much of the original quality of the image as possible, while remaining acceptable in terms of memory and disk space usage.  For large trees and similar objects, we recommend 6 inches high, for shrubs: 4 inches, and for flowers: 2 inches.  If you make them larger, they will generally need to be reduced in size more when you drop them onto your photos, but they will retain more image quality.

 

I just masked off an area, but now my whole screen went red!

That is the mask overlay.  Previous versions referred to it as the “Ruby Overlay”.  You can turn this option on or off by going to the “Mask” menu, and selecting “Mask Overlay”.  The overlay is primarily helpful when you are confused about which side of your mask border is inside or outside of the current mask, and some people prefer to leave it on all the time, while others prefer to leave it off all the time.