Many object names missing on svg and ai file open

stephenblender · June 10, 2020

I am wanting to migrate from ai to Affinity. The first few files I have opened have had some issues. Specifically the names of objects in a drawing are missing altogether (ai) or mostly missing (svg). My version is ai is older (CS6) so having problems there did not surprise me, but I expected the svg to load correctly. The ommisions have me worried that svg support might not be...complete?

For those curious about the details I am using the drawing of a map with some website software called Mapplic to make an interactive map. The object names of svg files are referenced.

Attached is a sample svg and screen capture of the Affinity control showing where there should be all named objects, but only some randomly seem to have names.

Hillside-Centre-Map-2020-v4-NUMBERS.svg

firstdefence · June 10, 2020

Not sure if Adobe Illustrator CS6 has this feature but… From Illustrator CC, the parent groups under the single layer (Layer 1) you have to Release to layers (Sequence) This will place them within their own layer like so...

Then you need to rename each layer like so, else they will import as Layer 1, Layer 2 etc… but either way can be renamed in Affinity Designer if that’s easier.

After exporting the SVG from Illustrator, opening the SVG layer stack will now look like this… You can drag all the objects from the sub layer to the parent layer to declutter, so as an example, everything under numbers-2 could be dragged out and placed under Numbers, then just delete numbers-2 You can also do this in Adobe Illustrator and illustrator will automatically delete the redundant numbers group.