Barcoding in Zoner Draw

Zoner Draw contains a special tool for adding barcodes to a drawing. The range of supported code types includes every widespread type.

Compared to specialized barcode printing programs, Zoner Draw has the following advantages: precise processing for each code -- customizable quiet zone, a choice of any valid code size, module width, weighting factors, checksums, cropping marks, and customizable font for the human-readable text. Also, the norm for each encoding type is respected perfectly every time you create a barcode.

Zoner Draw does not need any special printer type, whereas the majority of specialized barcoding software is tied to particular, special printers.

Because it is a general-purpose graphics editor, Zoner Draw offers a wide range of options that specialized programs don't offer. In Zoner Draw, you can design a product's complete packaging -- not just its barcode.

Barcodes in Zoner Draw are generated based on vector graphics, and so it achieves the maximum precision possible for any given output device. Specialized barcoding programs, on the other hand, usually use TrueType fonts to generate barcodes.

Zoner Draw has barcode printing features that help you print good-quality barcodes even on printers with relatively low resolutions, e.g. 200 DPI thermal printers.

Another plus of Zoner Draw is its price; specialized programs can cost up to four times as much.

How to Add Barcodes to Drawings

Activate the tool for adding barcodes to a drawing, then click on the drawing. A dialog for configuring the barcode type and settings will appear. Click OK to add the barcode to the drawing; this works just as if you were importing vector graphics from a file. We recommend that you make no further changes to the barcode after you add it, as this can make it unscannable. And by changing codes' physical size you can, in the case of EAN codes for example, break the rules for their use. The barcoding dialog remembers the values you used the last time you visited it, even if it was during a previous session in Zoner Draw.

Maximum Code Precision

Using Zoner Draw guarantees you that your codes will be generated with the highest precision in the industry. Unlike certain other programs, Zoner Draw does not draw barcodes using TrueType fonts, but rather using graphical objects. Codes can be optimized even for low-resolution printers (e.g. thermal transfer printers) and bar width can also be adjusted to fit your desired output technology (e.g. inkjet, screen printing, etc.) with precision up to 0.01 µm. These features make Zoner Draw 5 give you the highest possible output quality available for this type of application.

Want Heavy-Duty Barcoding?

Zoner Draw 5 only supports the creation of individual, non-dynamic barcodes. On the one hand, you can use Zoner Draw's linear multiple-copying function to use these to cover the whole page, e.g. for some simple sticker-based barcoding tasks. But on the other hand, you can't use it to produce a series of codes with a sequence of values, or to base barcodes on data from a database or an Excel sheet. This is where Zoner Barcode Studio 2 comes in handy. Print jobs prepared in this program can be exported for opening in Zoner Draw; this is great if you want to have both the barcoding flexibility of Zoner Barcode Studio and the layout flexibility of Zoner Draw.