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I'm really liking Affinity Designer whenever I've tried it; it does pretty much everything that I use Illustrator for. I just wish it could properly injest .AI

I'm really liking Affinity Designer whenever I've tried it; it does pretty much everything that I use Illustrator for. I just wish it could properly injest .AI files. It opens them, but only does things with the PDF header part, resulting in a loss of all groupings. Things like long vectors (think trail routes on a hike/bike trail map) become split into LOTS of little pieces. Affinity Designer is great if you're starting and sticking in it, but moving complex Illustrator docs into it kinda falls apart. :(

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
What if you export your Illustrator files to SVG? Just an idea.
slantyyz 7y ago
> I just wish it could properly injest .AI files. For me, it's the only non-Illustrator app that I tried that didn't mangle them too much (visually speaking). I had tried so many free and non-free (but inexpensive) apps on Mac and Windows that would have so many problems with .ai files. Once I would load them into an app, the would look nothing like I expected them to. My use case for .ai files is usually to simply convert them to svg or emf to be able to insert them into documents. Thankfully I didn't have a need to edit them, because it sounds a little nightmarish from your experience.
- c0nsumer 7y ago
  That's very true and a good point. It does load them fine, and they are usable. Just... Not good for editing. For a specific example, check out this: http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontiac_Lake_17-Jun-2014.pdf http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontia... In the original .AI the main mountain bike trail loop is a single path. Makes it nice and easy to work on. Bring it into Designer and I think it became dozens of really small ones? I'd really like to move to a Designer workflow because AI is so expensive for the no-pay volunteer work that I do making these maps, but the up-front work of that would be tremendous. So for now... I just can't.

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago

What if you export your Illustrator files to SVG? Just an idea.

slantyyz 7y ago

> I just wish it could properly injest .AI files. For me, it's the only non-Illustrator app that I tried that didn't mangle them too much (visually speaking). I had tried so many free and non-free (but inexpensive) apps on Mac and Windows that would have so many problems with .ai files. Once I would load them into an app, the would look nothing like I expected them to. My use case for .ai files is usually to simply convert them to svg or emf to be able to insert them into documents. Thankfully I didn't have a need to edit them, because it sounds a little nightmarish from your experience.

c0nsumer 7y ago
That's very true and a good point. It does load them fine, and they are usable. Just... Not good for editing. For a specific example, check out this: http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontiac_Lake_17-Jun-2014.pdf http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontia... In the original .AI the main mountain bike trail loop is a single path. Makes it nice and easy to work on. Bring it into Designer and I think it became dozens of really small ones? I'd really like to move to a Designer workflow because AI is so expensive for the no-pay volunteer work that I do making these maps, but the up-front work of that would be tremendous. So for now... I just can't.