Managing projects

The Object Data Manager is an advanced feature that is particularly useful as a project management tool when you create or supervise a large project. Using the Object Data Manager is like having a small spreadsheet program, like Quattro Pro® or Microsoft® Excel, within your graphics program. It lets you track expenses, deadlines, assignments, progress, or anything else you need to organize. You can enter many types of project data about individual objects or groups of objects.

In this section, you’ll learn about

•setting up the project database

•assigning and copying object data

•viewing an object data summary

Setting up the project database

Before you assign project data to objects in a drawing, you need to know what information you want to display. By default, CorelDRAW creates four data fields: Name, Cost, Comments, and CDRStaticID. The first three fields can be edited or deleted as required. The CDRStaticID field is hidden; it is used by CorelDRAW to identify objects, and it can’t be edited or deleted.

You can create and assign as many data fields as you want, as long as they use permitted format variables. For more information about assigning data fields, see “Assigning and copying object data” on page 269.

At any time, you can change the setting, such as the name or format, of a data field. If you require custom fields, you can define their formats using four basic field formats:

General, Date/time, Linear/angular, and Numeric. Each of these formats provides a series of common settings. If the preset formats in CorelDRAW don’t provide the information you want in your data summary, you can create your own custom formats using the variables available for the format type you’re using. The field format you select is used for all objects in the active drawing.

CorelDRAW: Managing projects

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You can reorder fields to display them in a logical order on the data summary. You can also delete any data field except CDRStaticID. When you delete a field, you also delete all data entered for that field in the active document.

To add a data field

1Click Tools ` Object Data Manager.

2In the Object data docker, click the Open Field Editor button .

3In the Object data field editor dialog box, click Create new field.

4To change the name of the field you created, double-click the field, type a new name, and press Enter.

5In the Add field to area, enable one or both of the following check boxes:

•Application defaults — stores the new field in the application

•Document defaults — stores the new field in the current document

You can also use this procedure to change the settings of an existing data field.

You can also

Change the format of a data field	Select the data field, and click Change in the
	Format area. In the Format definition
	dialog box, enable the option beside the
	format type you want to use, and choose a
	format from the Format type list.
Create a custom format for a data field	Select the data field, and click Change in the
	Format area. In the Format definition
	dialog box, enable the option beside the
	format type you want to create. Type the
	format in the Create box, and press Enter.
Delete a data field	Choose the name of the data field from the
	list. To choose multiple fields, hold down
	Ctrl, and click the names in the list. Click
	Delete field(s).

268	CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 User Guide