illustrator is not an app for page layout, but is used for creating vector based art work. if you want multiple pages, you need to use an app like indesign, pagemaker, or quark and import your illustrator art into that app.
You can also make multiple pages as separate files and then combine them in a pdf using acrobat... it's not that great but works in a pinch if you don't need to lay things out across pages (I use it for contracts, meeting minutes, etc. but plan to get around to indesign one of these days)
This is the main advantage of Freehand over illustrator. You can create multiple page layouts in a single document. I think Illustrator is a better illustration program, but e is right, you can't make multiple pages in Illustrator. You'll have to use InDesign or Quark, or as I mentioned before, Freehand. Good luck.
while we are on the illustrator topic: when you export from autocad to illustrator where the lines meet on the corners there is a noticable gap. i've tried messing with the miter limit and other options. any ideas on how to get rid of this ugliness? thanks.
pete, you can't do that. you can place illustrator art into indesign >> file: place: and find the art you want to place. illustrator is drawing app only and indesign is a page layout app. you can draw things in indesign, but it is not made for that purpose and thus the tools are not as robust.
you can do what josh is saying, but linking through file: place is better. this way, if you edit the original illustrator file, the changes will show in your indesign file. if copy/paste or drag/drop and then you want to make changes, you have to copy/paste or drag/drop all over again.
I usually make the presentation panels/layout in Illustrator. For multiple pages Indesign could be an option but, like what josh said, you lose the vectorization. Everything, what ever file you import it in, it turns to bitmap, and that is quit unfortunate.
Josh - there are two ways to avoid the line problem. The best is to set up a "printer" option that will plot to an eps file. I don't know how to do it - if anyone on here does it would be great to find out - but at my last office it was set up that way. You would plot as though you were doing a plot file, but it would save it to an eps that could be opened in illustrator. The lines came out perfect, and best of all you could plot it at a specific scale so it would show up in scale in illustrator, line weights & all... There were some issues plotting to a large format plotter, having to do with drivers, but again the IT guy figured it out.
The other way that I use now is to just copyclip out of autocad and paste straight into illustrator. It'll show up with all your lines and the background (a black box) together. Select all, then go to Object, ungroup. You can then select and delete the background, select all your lines & change the color, lineweight, etc. Also, if you have shapes that you want to split into separate lines, select and go to Object, compund path, release. Hope that helps.
Quark was great back in the day... the new Quark is crap. I lost an entire book design. Even the multiple backups I made were corrupted. On the Quark note... sometimes I design every page in Illustrator then dump them as .eps files into Quark 4 (old school). I have designed a 100 page book using Illustrator (stand alone).. no prob. It sucks that you can't link text page to page, but it is possible after you have the final text edit. Or just go with the HotDoor multipage. I also use cadtools.. http://www.hotdoor.com/ freaking awesome!
Illustrator is way more powerful than the page layout programs.. so if you are going gold... use multipage.
Pete, Indesign does not lose the vectorization of the imported files, it merely shows you a lightweight preview version of them that may look a bit like a bitmap. If you right click on the imported artwork and go down to display performance you can turn the quality back up to high allowing you to see the original vector lines more clearly. It will make the navigation a bit slower but it's not to bad. Another option is to show the "overprint preview" which gives you a quick preview of what the page would look like printed with the higher display resolution.
I'm a total InDesign geek. I get off by an automatically created table of contents and index. I even like the basic drawing functions of Indesign more than Illustrator. Why do all the arrow heads in Ill suck? Why do they scale when you move a line's end points around? InDesign's arrowheads work more like a normal CAD program and retain their shape when the line is modified and they also look a lot nicer.
make a document whose size is made out of multiples of the page you want to use (like, 3 a3 large) and then selct show page portion in the view panel, using the page tool (under the hand in the toolbar) you'll end up with a long strip with dotted lines telling you where the various tiles end, so then do your layout and print it out! that's for paper output, otherwise, as it has been suggested before, indesign!
question:
ok, this is something i haven't found out yet; how do you draw a continous broken line in indesign? do you have to draw single straight lines and then match the ends? there must be a faster way!
richard, are you asking if you can draw a straight line with several points in between the end point?
pete, you can do single pages, but indesign is best used for multiple page documents. the text tools are more robust than illustrator, you can have page numbers applied automatically, create master pages, linking text boxes, and by linking files and not placing them in the file, your file size will remain relatively small. that said i use it for single pages too. i use it for templates for my letterhead, invoices, etc. i like it better than word because the text features are more robust than word.
the only way i know how to do that is to use the pen tool and hold down the shift key [this will keep the points you create in the same plane, or at 45 or 90 degrees] and create as many points along that line as you desire. you could also do the same as above but only create the end points and then go back over the line with the same tool or the add anchor point tool and insert additional points as desired. the latter way is better if the line is already created. i don't know how to create points that are of equal distance across that line in a simple way.
pete, I'm the same as "e" in that most of the time I use indesign for multi-page documents but sometimes I also use it for single page document. The layout tools are so much better than word for CVs, product sheets, etc. that it makes sense. If I actually have a complex drawing insead of a complex layout, I will do the drawing in illustrator.
Richard, maybe I'm confused about your question but you use the same tool in InDesign to make a polylines as you would in illustator: the pen tool. Just click points around and they are joined into one line object. If you click-drag you will get curved line segments.
If you don't want the gap where two lines meet, you need to make sure that the two lines are one polyline. You can use PEdit to change them in AutoCAD.
illustrator : help!
i cant seem to figure out how to create a multiple pages in illustrator. this must be possible. does anyone know how?
please help.
File : New Document
that only creates one page.
how can I add a second page? please.
illustrator is not an app for page layout, but is used for creating vector based art work. if you want multiple pages, you need to use an app like indesign, pagemaker, or quark and import your illustrator art into that app.
You can also make multiple pages as separate files and then combine them in a pdf using acrobat... it's not that great but works in a pinch if you don't need to lay things out across pages (I use it for contracts, meeting minutes, etc. but plan to get around to indesign one of these days)
This is the main advantage of Freehand over illustrator. You can create multiple page layouts in a single document. I think Illustrator is a better illustration program, but e is right, you can't make multiple pages in Illustrator. You'll have to use InDesign or Quark, or as I mentioned before, Freehand. Good luck.
Just make a new layer for each page. The layers can have sub-layers so things dont get too confusing. But make sure your file size doesnt get too big.
You can set up your drawing/layout in illustrator and import to Adobe InDesign, which is useful in creating books/layouts for print and publication.
while we are on the illustrator topic: when you export from autocad to illustrator where the lines meet on the corners there is a noticable gap. i've tried messing with the miter limit and other options. any ideas on how to get rid of this ugliness? thanks.
Just open the dwg in Illustrator. But for the most part, importing acad drawings into any program is a mess.
How can you export layouts from Illustrator to Indesign. There is no file type for indesign in the export menu.
pete, you can't do that. you can place illustrator art into indesign >> file: place: and find the art you want to place. illustrator is drawing app only and indesign is a page layout app. you can draw things in indesign, but it is not made for that purpose and thus the tools are not as robust.
pete...just drag and drop. i can't remember offhand but you may lose the vectorization.
trace...i'm wondering how to get rid of that gap created when two lines meet. not how to get dwg into ai.
you can do what josh is saying, but linking through file: place is better. this way, if you edit the original illustrator file, the changes will show in your indesign file. if copy/paste or drag/drop and then you want to make changes, you have to copy/paste or drag/drop all over again.
I usually make the presentation panels/layout in Illustrator. For multiple pages Indesign could be an option but, like what josh said, you lose the vectorization. Everything, what ever file you import it in, it turns to bitmap, and that is quit unfortunate.
e...good point. i'll second that.
Josh - there are two ways to avoid the line problem. The best is to set up a "printer" option that will plot to an eps file. I don't know how to do it - if anyone on here does it would be great to find out - but at my last office it was set up that way. You would plot as though you were doing a plot file, but it would save it to an eps that could be opened in illustrator. The lines came out perfect, and best of all you could plot it at a specific scale so it would show up in scale in illustrator, line weights & all... There were some issues plotting to a large format plotter, having to do with drivers, but again the IT guy figured it out.
The other way that I use now is to just copyclip out of autocad and paste straight into illustrator. It'll show up with all your lines and the background (a black box) together. Select all, then go to Object, ungroup. You can then select and delete the background, select all your lines & change the color, lineweight, etc. Also, if you have shapes that you want to split into separate lines, select and go to Object, compund path, release. Hope that helps.
awesome..thanks..
you go r.a. rudolph
I have been using hot door products for a while... this works...
http://www.hotdoor.com/multipage/
Quark was great back in the day... the new Quark is crap. I lost an entire book design. Even the multiple backups I made were corrupted. On the Quark note... sometimes I design every page in Illustrator then dump them as .eps files into Quark 4 (old school). I have designed a 100 page book using Illustrator (stand alone).. no prob. It sucks that you can't link text page to page, but it is possible after you have the final text edit. Or just go with the HotDoor multipage. I also use cadtools.. http://www.hotdoor.com/ freaking awesome!
Illustrator is way more powerful than the page layout programs.. so if you are going gold... use multipage.
Thanks guys!
Pete, Indesign does not lose the vectorization of the imported files, it merely shows you a lightweight preview version of them that may look a bit like a bitmap. If you right click on the imported artwork and go down to display performance you can turn the quality back up to high allowing you to see the original vector lines more clearly. It will make the navigation a bit slower but it's not to bad. Another option is to show the "overprint preview" which gives you a quick preview of what the page would look like printed with the higher display resolution.
I'm a total InDesign geek. I get off by an automatically created table of contents and index. I even like the basic drawing functions of Indesign more than Illustrator. Why do all the arrow heads in Ill suck? Why do they scale when you move a line's end points around? InDesign's arrowheads work more like a normal CAD program and retain their shape when the line is modified and they also look a lot nicer.
Andrew, do you use Indesign also for single pages instead of Illustrator.
make a document whose size is made out of multiples of the page you want to use (like, 3 a3 large) and then selct show page portion in the view panel, using the page tool (under the hand in the toolbar) you'll end up with a long strip with dotted lines telling you where the various tiles end, so then do your layout and print it out! that's for paper output, otherwise, as it has been suggested before, indesign!
question:
ok, this is something i haven't found out yet; how do you draw a continous broken line in indesign? do you have to draw single straight lines and then match the ends? there must be a faster way!
richard, are you asking if you can draw a straight line with several points in between the end point?
pete, you can do single pages, but indesign is best used for multiple page documents. the text tools are more robust than illustrator, you can have page numbers applied automatically, create master pages, linking text boxes, and by linking files and not placing them in the file, your file size will remain relatively small. that said i use it for single pages too. i use it for templates for my letterhead, invoices, etc. i like it better than word because the text features are more robust than word.
e: yes, exactly! how do i do that? the scissor tool would just split it up...
the only way i know how to do that is to use the pen tool and hold down the shift key [this will keep the points you create in the same plane, or at 45 or 90 degrees] and create as many points along that line as you desire. you could also do the same as above but only create the end points and then go back over the line with the same tool or the add anchor point tool and insert additional points as desired. the latter way is better if the line is already created. i don't know how to create points that are of equal distance across that line in a simple way.
pete, I'm the same as "e" in that most of the time I use indesign for multi-page documents but sometimes I also use it for single page document. The layout tools are so much better than word for CVs, product sheets, etc. that it makes sense. If I actually have a complex drawing insead of a complex layout, I will do the drawing in illustrator.
Richard, maybe I'm confused about your question but you use the same tool in InDesign to make a polylines as you would in illustator: the pen tool. Just click points around and they are joined into one line object. If you click-drag you will get curved line segments.
hello
you must consult the manual
Josh,
If you don't want the gap where two lines meet, you need to make sure that the two lines are one polyline. You can use PEdit to change them in AutoCAD.
andrew/e
thanks! i never used the pen tool, even if i've been unsing indesign for years...kinda dumb really!
cris,
what are the differences between postscript level 1, level 2, and level 1 plus? do one of these work better than the other for plotting to file?
southpaw, i'm not really sure what the difference is. i'm gonna try plotting with both and see if there are any noticeable differences.
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