Printing Mulitple Items with CorelDRAW's Imposition Layout Feature

Corel's Imposition Layout feature was designed so that you can print more than one page of a document on a single sheet of paper. This is a handy feature when creating magazines, manuals and other multi-page documents.

We're going to use this same tool to engrave several plaques to fill the engraving table without having to duplicate the image.

To view a Flash Demonstration, click here.

1. For this project, we are creating several plaques all with the same text on them. By filling the entire engraving table, we will decrease the amount of time to engrave each plaque.

   We have two choices for how to fill the laser's table. We can either duplicate the image across the entire table, or use imposition layout to send multiple plaques to the laser.
   
   

2. When the plaque is setup how you like it, print it to the laser system.

   With our other properties already set, change the piece size to match the entire area of the engraving table. We'll be creating this on a Helix system, so enter a piece size of 24" x 18". Click the OK button when you are done.
   
   

3. Click on the layout tab at the top of the page. At the bottom of the Layout tab, you'll find the Imposition Layout setup. Choose Edit so we can setup our custom settings for our job.
   
   
   
   
4. At the top of the page you can choose the number of columns and rows of plaques you want to print. We currently have one plaque set up on the page. We need to change this to maximize the number we can fit on the engraving page. Since we have a full 24" across the table to use, and each plaque takes up 6" horizontally we can fit 4 plaques across the table, and two rows of plaques.
   
   
   
   
5. Select the page margins by clicking on the white margins above or below the page. With the page margins selected, you'll see a new button at the top of the page that is highlighted. This is the Auto Margins button. We want to deselect this so that the page margins will be 0".
   
   
   
   
6. The page is now correctly laid out. To close the Imposition Layout window, click the check mark on the left side of the page.
   
   
   
   
7. Everything is laid out correctly, so we're ready to engrave our plaques. In a few easy steps you can use the Imposition tool to print multiple plaques in no time!
   
   

To see how to add variable names to these plaques, click here.