Corel Designer
Corel Designer is a engineering and graphic design application which belongs to the Corel Draw Technical Suite. Originally Micrografx Draw, Corel purchased in 2001.
File Identification
Corel Designer 9 was Micrografx last release, Designer 10-12 was based on the RIFF format, while X4-onward is based on ZIP/XML format with X4-X6 wrapped around a .CDR. This begins with the characteristic local ZIP file header signature PK. The first archive member is an uncompressed file named mimetype. This 8-byte string is therefore also found at offset 30. The content of this file specifies the mime type of the corresponding Corel Designer graphic. From version 17 this type is application/x-vnd.corel.zcf.designer.document+zip. For older ZIP based versions this type is application/x-vnd.corel.corel.designer.document+zip. Therefore we find this 49 or 45 byte long string at offset 38 in the ZIP archive. Starting with version 17, the RIFF based part is stored in a file named root.dat. For older ZIP based versions the corresponding file is called riffData.cdr. These files are stored in a folder called content in the archive. PRONOM binary signatures needed.
| Format / Version | Ext. | RIFF type | PRONOM | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Designer 9.0 | .dsf | n/a | x-fmt/151 | 2002 |
| Designer 10.0 | .des | DESA |
2003 | |
| Designer 10.5 | .des | DESB |
||
| Designer 12.0 | .des | DESC |
2006 | |
| Designer X4 | .des | DESE |
2008 | |
| Designer X5 | .des | DESF |
2010 | |
| Designer 16 | .des | DESG |
2013 | |
| Designer 17 | .des | DESH |
2014 | |
| Designer 19 | .des | DESI |
2017 | |
| Designer 20 | .des | DESJ |
2018 | |
| Designer 21 | .des | DESK |
2019 |
