Adobe Illustrator Files

Packaging designers often send dielines as Adobe Illustrator files. Import one with File › Import › Import…, and save one with File › Export › Export…, choosing Adobe Illustrator Files.

Import

• Illustrator 9 and later save a PDF inside the .ai file. ParametrIQ CAD reads it as a PDF, with its layers. If you get the message that the file has no PDF or PostScript content, open it in Illustrator and save it again with Create PDF Compatible File switched on.
• Illustrator 3 to 8 files are read in their own format, with their layers, spot (custom) colours, compound paths, clip groups and text.

Clipping paths and clip groups are applied as they are for PDF: what they hide is cut away.

Each line goes on a layer by its spot colour, its layer or its colour, exactly as for PDF.

Several pages, several artboards

A drawing with several pages can be written as one Illustrator file, choosing All pages or Pages … in the export options (as for PDF). The file is then PDF-compatible (the Illustrator 8 format has a single page), a page each, named after them. Opening it, Illustrator asks which pages to open, and places each on an artboard of its own. One page is written as before.

Export

The drawing is written in the Illustrator 8 format, which every version of Illustrator opens, unless you switch on PDF-compatible file in the export options (the format of Illustrator 9 and later, a PDF inside, which other programs read too):

• Each layer is an Illustrator layer, in the layer's colour.
• Die-making layers are spot colours named after the layer, so the dieline can be separated from the artwork (unless Dielines as spot colours is off). Other layers are written in their print colours.
• Line widths are kept; lines without one are 0.5 pt.
• Text is written as point text, or as outlines with Text as outlines.
• Magnifiers: what a magnifier's callout shows is a clip group, cut to the callout, in each layer that has some of it.

The Illustrator 8 format can't hold raster images. If the drawing has images, ParametrIQ CAD writes a PDF-compatible Illustrator file instead (what Illustrator itself saves), which keeps them.