garbage conversion utilities - you might try it as .dxf (vers. 14 or 13lt appear most stable) and then walking it across

Personally haven't tried it but based on experience - it might work better.

a) save as an acad 2000 .dxf (if you want to maintain layers but lose lineweights)

or

b) plot a .eps (if you want to maintain lineweights but lose layers)

option b requires setting up a postscript printer driver via the add-a-plotter wizard.

i do my lineweights in illustrator based on layers. so i need to preserve layers but not lineweights.

just tried .dxf and it made no difference. whether the file is .dxf or .dwg (and saved in older version, like 2000), it still opens funkily in CS and fine in ai 10.


[also, to clarify, the issue only happens with splines, not polylines.]

is there a reason you can't just PEDIT everything before exporting?

if you are using splines in autocad for curves, they will convert as weird loopy things (technical word for it. hah.) . i found the best way to fix this is to first bring the autocad file into rhino, save as .ai file then open in illustrator cs like normal. its an extra step, but saves alot of frustration.

Make sure to regen before saving?

I had a similar "loopy" problem going from Maya Curves to Illustrator . . . used a rhino as a middleman to fix it.

Hi

A saved AutoCAD file is not a graphic but a CAD file , maby Illustrator can use the embeded graphic in an AutoCAD file but couldn't the problem be solved by just plotting to a graphic format BMP or Jpg. file ?
And isn't Illustrator geared better for importing a Jpg or other graphic format that you can produce by plotting to file ?
DWG format is not a graphic format but a CAD format.

I am assuming he is wanting the vector goodness not raster?

Guess it would be an idea to check what graphic formats Illustrator can input, --- btw. AutoCAD can also produce Postscript graphics.

the suggestions to bring it through rhino don't really help... it's the same amount of extra steps as bringing it through ai10 which i'm already doing.

the point of using illustrator is to manipulate the linework (adjust line color, line weight, do fills/ "live paint", etc), so converting the cad file into an image impedes the whole purpose of the excercise.

the big concern is that illustrator10 works and CS doesn't. maybe someone knows of an obscure setting somewhere in CS that would affect the import?

did you try an R12 .dxf?

just did 5 minutes of quick tests.

an r2000 .dxf sometimes works with splines. I think it has something to do with the units setting in autocad or illustrator, but I can't get anything consistant.

an r12 .dxf always works. looks like it converts splines to 3d polylines automatically.

thanks guys for all your help so far.

the r12.dxf thing unfortunately works only at a certain resolution. it turns the spline into a polyline that is a bunch of very short straight segments, no curves.

still at a loss.

i, like you have had the same problem and i, like you was more concerned with layers than i was lineweights. the frustration finally got to me however and i gave up trying to control lineweight in illus.
so now i print or export my drawings as .eps. all of your curves will come out perfect and once you get the hang of setting up a ctb file you'll kick yourself that you ever wasted so much time changing things over in illus.
but if that is a big draw to you, you can always ungroup the .eps file and then you can change lineweights or colors or whatever manually, just as you've been doing before

if you can get your hands on a copy of CS2 that should do the trick - i had similar problems but they seem to have been solved with the ultra-new version of illustrator

I save mine to the desktop as r12 dxf. How do you go from AutoCad to Photoshop?

if you can select all the lines that used to be splines in illustrator, you can go object>path>simplify and set curve precision to 100%. that will convert the segmented lines to curved.

of course that doesn't help much if you can't easily select them from amongst other objects.

you could select all the splines in acad (select all and change the drop down in the properties palette to spline) and change their color before exporting your r12 .dxf, and then in illustrator, select one of them, go select>same>stroke color, and then simplify paths.

but that's getting a bit convoluded too, and wouldn't work if you do any color settings in cad.

hmmm.

Archinaut: I'm seeing the same issues in CS2

What about this...
In autocad, set up a paperspace layout with the appropriate viewport scaled to the desired scale (pretend you are going to plot this out, go through the same procedure in setting up paperspace layout). Save the dwg. while in paperspace.

Open the dwg in Illustrator. You should have the same exact scale as what you had in the Autocad paperspace viewport. The linework seems to of all come in correctly.

However there are of course defaults to this of which I need HELP with.

1. it puts all layers in autocad on one layer regardless of unchecking merge layers when opening the drawing in illustrator.

2. the xrefs associated in autocad don't seem to come in to illustrator.

Doesn't anyone know away with getting the layers to show up separately and have the xrefs to show up (possibly without binding in autocad)?

for all intensive purposes, that's the same as using an EPS printer driver, except plotting an eps will take care of problem 2.

you could lisp the plotting of each layer separately, and then (maybe) script the combining of them in illustrator. but that also seems rather crude.

has anybody used any of the cad translators? I might grab some demos just to see if there is an elegant solution to this.

I just copy that junk from autocad and paste it into illustrator CS2. Works fine generally, and is quick as hell.

-andrew

Good point I didn't think of it as an eps. I was just trying to get rid of one extra step.

Yes I thought about isolating the major layers and then bringing them into illustrator separately but that just seems like it takes so much time.

Still no solution on bringing in the layers separately except for what I stated before?

This issue is really annoying.

Rabbits - I will have to give your method a shot. But still it seems that it would stick everything on one layer. Is that the case?

i have cad2005 and illustrator 10...u can save the the cad as pdf...send in as vectors to illustrator. but u have to save it as the adobe pdf...i had similar problems...so install the professional acrobat, thats what i did...

I second J Chen above.
That's the only way I work. I just make sure to have all the line weights worked out in CAD and save it as an Adobe PDF. Once I place the PDF file in Illustrator, the scale is all set up and line weights are right. Nothing to deal with, just placement.

...and if either of you two had read the thread, you would know that that doesn't help at all.

(unless you have a way to open a layered PDF in AI and maintain layers):

explained further: while you can create a pdf that maintains autocad layers and doesn't have the spline issue, getting it into illustrator isn't so easy (illustrator merges the layers, and pdfs imported to illustrator are finicky to work with in general)

Try Ctrl+C in autocad

Ctrl+V in illustrator

Haha, when i noticed the date, it was too late, but maybe the solution can help someone trying to do the same thing, and reading this old thread... Like me ✌️