Illustrator Cs6 Package Missing
Wesley Godinez
We have seen this all too often: Someone packages and does not notice that the images in AI files are missing, and deletes all apparently unused files before archiving. And how are they supposed to know? Preflight does not detect it, and there is no warning on packaging. Nasty surprise when a new version is to be made five years later! If you are lucky, the hires PDFs used for printing are still available ...
I did a package of a 120 pp publication containing placed AI files with linked images from scattered volumes to produce a clean version for archiving, and discovered this problem. It would be a pain to gather all those links or embed them into each AI file before doing a new package. Someone suggested packaging each AI file separately as a stopgap solution. Still takes time as 95% of the pages are AI composed for layout and typo features.
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The low hanging fruit is creating a multi-page PDF export of all your layout pages with layer support (PDF supports layers and other illustrator capabilities). The advantage of adding full illustrator editability to PDFs is that you can also open those multi-page PDFs in Indesign, or PowerPoint (Adobe Acrobat exports PDFs to PowerPoint and works really well). So you can create entire presentations/documents in Rhino with live geometry and export/publish to a 2D documentation package when you are done.
Views
Material assignments
Layer visibility
Object visibility
Curve Shutlining on/off (important for design variations)
Named position
Active clipping planes/Section views
Active foreground/background images
Grasshopper configuration states
We could also have options for make2D at export time. So you can work with live 3D models creating all your views, fully editable, nothing becomes obsolete; then flatten&vectorize them at the last minute in one shot.
If you like the idea tell @bobmcneel. @RhinoFabStudio and I have been nagging him for a few years on this, we have him almost convinced. It might take a few more years or a bunch of people voting this up to give it priority.
I think before a global export can be created, a global save/recall of all possible states of a model into what makes a unique view needs to be implemented. I know the need and some conceptual ideas have been clearly identified and demonstrated to some folks at McNeel. I also think this has broad user appeal, for pretty much all industries if you need to either present or document your work.
I mean, you can tweak line weights and clipping planes and layer states all you like, but an export of a wireframe view is simply not the same thing as a usable drawing. Even if it was in an editable format, it could take hours of work to clean up each drawing. And McNeel obviously know this, because the layout documentation is conspicuously based on flat 2D geometry only.
Our company is using AEM and it works great for Photoshop and InDesign, and great for storing assets for Illustrator, but if the illustrator file has links in it, I haven't figured out an easy way to link those assets. Before AEM, we had a server where all assets lived and links would not break if someone else opened your doc to edit it because we were all connected to that server. But with AEM, the links do not stay linked once you put the doc and the associated links on the DAM (we file linked assets in different "folders" than the actual illustrator/InDesign project docs). The only way I know to relink is this process, which is very convoluted and time consuming:
I can confirm your description and it seems to me like the extra work you will have with this will be unending, prone to manual errors and you run the risk of not getting a warning if an asset has expired/was changed.
Illustrator downloads the files inside a folder structure that is similar to your AEM but within your local harddrive. The connection to AEM is lost instantly.
Even the filename gets distortet into some very very long check number.
I even checked in CRXDE, AI Files do not have any content within jcr:content/related/links/sling:members
Would you had built it within InDesign, you have a function to relink files with AEM, and also check for Updates that had occured within the AEM.
What are the reasons for using Illustrator instead of InDesign?
What function is missing within InDesign?
Maybe the only option will be to convert your files...
I fear that the only way foreward i can recommend is to use InDesign as your Layout tool, since this is what it was built for. Illustrator might have some functionality as a layout tool, but it is not THE TOOL for the task.
I don't want to convert you to the church of InDesign
...but... maybe we can have a chat someday ;D if you are interested.
In all my years, i did not have seen any layout work that was best made with Illustrator rather then InDesign. I am not saying that this cant be the case, but i have not seen it. Would be interested so see such a file.
Depending on the number of files you are looking at, this can be a lot of work but i don't see a way to get to your desired outcome within Illustrator alone.
You can have everything as a Illustrator file, the logos, the art, even the punch marks of your package design - and then import this into an InDesign file and arrange it the way you want.
As for the control of what program is used.
I created a guide "quality- and data standards" for our company that became part of the media creation contract we make with agencies, photographers and freelance designers.
In there it is written out how everything has to be.
From naming conventions to file formats and much more.
This helped a lot.
Oh, you don't have to convert me to the church of InDesign. I'm already a member! lol. I used to freelance for 13 years, and one of the agencies I worked for there was a creative artist who did EVERYTHING in Illustrator. It was horrible working with her files...HORRIBLE...
We've tried with illustrations, but we get CAD drawings from the drafting dept (in all caps of course) and have to convert them to format them to "our style". But they name them these big long names (as PC people often do) and sometimes it's very difficult to figure out what part of the name is important. So, unfortunately, it's a step that often gets put to the side. And we have many thousands of technical drawings for our datasheets and instruction manuals so it's not feasible to go back and rename everything.
We have a naming convention but it's difficult to get everyone (8 artists) to use it.
How to set it up that everyone is able to do it right is easy - how to set it up so that everyone actually does it is a mix of carrot and stick.
The carrot is, if you do the name right, it saves time later when the file needs to be put in the AEM. The stick is, if you don't do it right you get a new task "Clean this up".
It will not be put into the AEM as long as it named like this.
I have an excel power query set up, which will someday be automated by the aem..., that extracts certain information from the filename and asset path and distributes tags and keywords accordingly.
So if a user creates the asset with the correct name, the aem metadata export import is able to do most of the work regarding the enrichment of metadata.
It looks a bit like this with some explanatory pictures that for example explain the difference between a feature picture and a detail picture (both are details, but one shows the function of a USP while the other might just be a close up of the material), all comes with a list of valid abbrevations.
The naming conventions look pretty much like this:
Documents:
Now i think we hijacked this tread enough with my naming standards - but reach out to me on LinkedIn or via PN if you'd like to talk more about this topic that everybody except me finds super cool and important.
That there is no hope in this direction might not be a pleasant answer,
but i would like to think that it is still a good answer to the question.
Yesterday or the day before the Asset Link got a new release that will fix some of the InDesign issues i am having with AEM. Maybe in the distant future there will be something like it for your task.
I have read the release notes and the comments on the plugin page - there was somebody expressing your exact situation. Maybe it was you
Try talking to your Adobe supplier - ask if the function you are missing might be already in production/in consideration... or if you can let go of that small hope as well and then move on:
Convert your Layout files into InDesign - use the right tool for the task.
Talk to your designers about it and build your own Quality- and Data standards.