Loading massive AI (Illustrator) files and post-processing them

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Thought someone around here might have an idea on this.

We have a truly massive AI file, so big that Illustrator crashes when trying to export to EPS or similar. It needs to be split into 200 pieces for separate individula printing, and they need a few quick actions running on them (adding printer marks, small border changes, etc - all automatable quite easily with most graphics packages).

But splitting by hand would take many days, and … not being able to export to any other file format means we can’t just use some ordinary BMP load on it.

So…anyone have ideas or (better) experience trying to import AI files into something else, preferably something with a good scripting language? (I would be delighted if there were a way to import into java, but not had any luck so far with google)

Um. There’s probably a monetary reward in this, if it requires any significant work on your part and you can help us to a good solution.

#2

Is it crashing if you try to export to png?

If you are going to be printing them then you can convert it into a raster format such as png and then use a library which can load only a portion of the raster so you can add the required changes and save the modified sub image.

If you cannot export it I would try loading the illustraltor file in corel draw 12 (there is a 30 free trial version) and seeing whether that program can export it to a raster format. Then peform the step above.

#3

I believe it has been tried in every major graphics package, on machines with up to 2 gb RAM, and none of them can manage it without crashing.

EDIT: yes, modern graphics apps are truly sh**. Especially CorelDraw and everything from Adobe.

#4

can you even load it from Illustrator?

how about printing to post script or similar and then use ghost script or similar to convert to a raster format editable by a graphic suite?

#5

Not enough RAM to output to postscript…see above.

EDIT: you know what EPS stands for, right? :wink:

#6

oops i forgot you had tried it in the beginning :slight_smile:

I find it odd that illustrator is having to create an raster of the entire product before segregating into printable blocks… Does Corel draw perform the same naive process or does it generate the raster only for the current printable block?

If you want i can try fiddling around on my end, but i will need a copy of the file (or similarly large)

#7

For printing, you have to supply bitmaps ultimately, and we have to add bleeds and other print stuff. Shrug. Printers are pretty fascist about what you send them.

Illustrator won’t do an automated version of this on the source vector - there are many google pages about how difficult it is to get illustrator to do this, and it seems it’s one of those “omfg Adobe how stupid are you? Why don’t you just add the damn feature?” things :(.

Haven’t got access to CD here, the CD experiments were done by a partner at different office, so hard to check, but I’ll ask.

Thanks for the otffer, but … then I’d have to kill you ;).

Seriously, it’s a very “highly confidential” image :(. Makes things harder, of course.