Scaling in CorelDraw for Kerf Compensation
Always make your paper size in CorelDraw twice as long and twice as wide as your table's cutting capacity. When you draw or import shapes into Corel, you want to postion them in the upper right quadrant of the screen. The vertical and horizontal lines are shown here only for illustration purposes.
When you left click your mouse on the shape, it becomes highlighted as shown above. In addition, a pair of small boxes appear at the upper left of your screen, as indicated by the black arrow above. The boxes show the length and width of the shape. If you change the values in the boxes and click back on the screen, the shape automatically changes in size to the new values. If the proportional sizing button is depressed, changing only one of the values is necessary, as the shape will increase or decrease in size proportionately.
Let's say we want to cut out the above circle, and we want the finished piece to be exactly 6" in diameter. Half of the kerf width (the gap left when the torch cuts) will be in the circle, and half will be in the surrounding material. Therefore, if we estimate the kerf to be .060" wide, we simply re-scale the circle to be 6.030" in diameter.
This feature also makes it easy to adjust for possible scaling error when importing shapes from AutoCAD or another drawing program.