Problem with Export (or Save as) in AI-Format

I am using CORELDRAW 10 and often have to export files to FreHand 7. When I use the Corel Export Filter for Adobe Illustrator I have this problem:
Curves and small structures (node distance smaller than 0.1 mm) are distorted when I open them in FH7, they have steps, where the curves should be smooth.
This has nothing to do with FH7, even when you reopen an AI-File in COREL, you have these distortions.
I inspected an COREL AI-file and found, that they use coordinate values with 4 digits after the komma, but the last digit is always zero. So they use only 3 digits in reality. (EPS COREL uses 5 digits, FH7 uses real 4 digits).

One way to solve the problem is to enlarge a COREL drawing and then export. But it should be better to repair the AI-Filter.

Is it possible to write a better filter in VBA?? Has someone experience in writing filters for CORELDRAW?
By the way, the WMF-Filter does not have this problem, but he produces a lot of nodes, where a few are enough.

[Alex]

I guess you are right. I see the same result in AI file exported from Draw 11. I would still enlarge the drawing by 1000% (10 times) before export, then bring it into FreeHand and shrink by 10% to bring the size back to normal.

You can't fix the export filter nor can you create a complete export filter in VBA. However you can create the simple curve exporting routines in VBA, so that it would inspect the curve information in CorelDRAW and write it to a text file in a format which Illustrator can understand (with all those "L", "M", "C" commands for lineto, moveto, curveto and so on). But if you want to render fills and outlines as well as other objects such as text and bitmaps, I wouldn't suggest to invest that much time to create your exporting code in VBA. It would take so much time. I'd just stretch and shrink the graphic before and after the export.

Thank you Alex fot the quick answer.

I only need the position of the nodes, because I mainly have to work with CAD-files which were imported by someone in COREL (no filling and rendering).
So your proposal to write an export VBA macro sounds interesting. I did not know, that Illustrator can read text-files.
But the problem is that I need to import in FH7. I use AI only as an interchange format. I tried also CGM but this also produces no smooth curves. The only filter which is working correctly is EPS, but this cannot be opened in FH7.

Thanks, Alex
greetings from Germany

[Alex]

What I meant was that AI file is a text file and you can easily generate one from VBA by just outputting all those curve commands. You will still have to add a header and footer to it but this can be obtained from an existing AI file (copy-paste).

I guess this topic should give you some ideas on how to do this (how to go through all the nodes and segments of a curve and get all those coordinates and output them to a text file): http://www.oberonplace.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=325

Obviously you will have to create some code of your own to make sure that you output the text in AI format so that Illustrator and Freehand can understand them.