How To: Use and Create Fill Patterns for a Sedimentary Log

Which patterns to use?

Corel Draw provides a number of different types of fills (Colours, Fountains, Patterns, Textures, Postscript and None). Some of these fill types demand substantial system resources in terms of RAM for editing drawings and disk space for storing them. You are strongly advised to stick to two-colour pattern fills for sedimentary logs. Make sure that you save your work before experimenting! There are suggestions for pattern fills for rocks in books such as Geology in the Field (Compton) and Geological Structures and Maps (Bennison). In essence: horizontal dash lines for shale, various sorts of dots for siltstones and sandstones, various sorts of ovals for conglomerates, and various sorts of bricks for limestones and dolomites.

Using Patterns

Select the object to be filled with a pattern. Click the Fill Tool and select Pattern Fill from the flyout list. Select a pattern from the Sample drop down list, indicated by the cursor arrow in the adjacent illustration.

A small number of the Corel Draw standard patterns are suitable for sedimentary logs. That illustrated shows a brick symbol that could be used for limestones. However, the Size needs to be set and it may be necessary to make the pattern less bold by setting the Front colour to grey and/or editing the pattern to make the lines thinner. Some experimentation is required to establish the right look for a pattern. To change a pattern size just open the Pattern Fill dialog and set new width and height values. The correct pattern and exisitng size for the selected object is displayed in the dialog.

Pattern Creation

Due to the way Corel Draw has been installed it is not possible for individuals create patterns in the EUCS or Grant Institute. So the rest of this How To is academic!

In the Pattern Fill dialog, click the Create button. In the Two-Color Pattern Editor illustrated below use the left mouse button to add pixels to the pattern and the left mouse button to remove pixels. The illustration below shows the brick pattern being made less bold by having the lower and right line of each brick being removed. The job is half done. Note that a pattern may appear irregular on screen because the screen display needs to leave out some pixels at low magnification. Zoom in to see how the pattern will print. The larger bitmap sizes are used for creating more complex patterns, such as ovals for conglomerates or slanting lines for cross bedding.

There is more on Dot Patterns.