CorelDraw's CDR to Fireworks?

Question

I have the layout of a website in CorelDraw X4 and I need to move it to Fireworks CS5 (for many reasons). The thing is that, apparently, the only method I was able to find on the Internet doesn't work very well. What I do is to export the file from Draw to AI (Adobe Illustrator) format. Then I import the file in fireworks, but there, strange things happen. The first thing is that borders are thicker after this process (1 to 4) but the real problem comes with some objects thar are converted to bitmaps (or so I think). When I delete all the bitmaps, only a few objects remain and that's obviously undesired. In my original file I use transparencies and gradients applied to many different objects.

Do you know why this happens and/or a possible solution? Thanks!

Edit: I think I'm getting closer! Apparently AI format doesn't support transparencies, so... I get all trasparencies out before exporting (not very nice, but what can I do, right?) or I ungroup all objects once imported into Fireworks and then carefully delete the bitmaps (which seem to be the approximation of transparencies for AI). All this is just about testing, if someone knows what happens or of another solutions, please, thow light. Thanks...

Answer 1

Ok, as nobody else answered my question I suppose I can consider myself capable to provide more information than anybody else, ha!

I've been studing the case and reached to a semi-solution. Apparently, AI is the only format supporting vectors that can be exported and imported by both editors. The problem with this is that AI doesn't support transparencies nor shadows. So... If you really want to do this, be prepared to work a bit.

What I did was to copy all the shapes without effects using this export/import method (surprisingly, line thickness was preserved correctly this time), then I examined shape by shape in Corel and applied the same (or its best aproximation) effects in Fireworks. This wasn't easy because the way both programs apply shadows and transparencies is a bit different. Yeah, it's not easy, but it's all we got...

Little tip: In my case I had some shapes with transparencies AND shadows. In Corel these shadows where strong as if the object was solid (not transparent). In fireworks, the shadow disappears with the object when the transparency is applied (as logically expected). What I did to solve this was to copy the object and apply a Gaussian blur to the object in the back, acting as a full shadow even when the object in the front was fading to transparent.