Naming of illustrator artboards get lost when openning them in AD

[JoJu]

Hello Affinity Designer users. I'm starting to introduce AD and AP in the company I'm working for. One of my jobs is drawing some illustration of various parameters for our UI  of our grinding-machines.

Currently I like to find out how seamless the transition for  AI to AD would be. So I opened a couple of source illustrations, which contain between 20 and 160 artboards / drawing area (I'm not familar with the English term). So far all graphics are visible.

But: in AI I named the drawing area for the IDC (Item Description Code) they are used for to illustrate what's going on. The AI file in Designer just shows "page 1, page 2...". I really don't want to rename all artboards from scratch. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a setting in either app I need to change?

Also, the guides from Illustrator do not appear after importing the file in AD.

Same for the symbols / icons - neither name nor the full symbol is shown.

I also had to use two different drawing areas for each illustration as the purpose is not only "exporting into UI database" but also "exporting into asset management database for documentation". But the 2 drawing areas on top of each other now appear as two different artboards, neither aligned nor connected.

It looks like a lot of manual work, so maybe I need to draw back my recommendation of AD as replacement for AI.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

The Affinity applications do not understand the proprietary, undocumented data in AI files. They can only process the embedded PDF file that Illustrator will optionally provide.

PDF files have Pages, not Artboards, so what you're seeing seems right to me.

This would also apply to Guides, and probably anything else you notice.

[JoJu]

For sure you're right. But then I really have to consider carefully to recommend the change of a main app. Last time I recommended the change from EPS to SVG (at a time Affinity was not even around, maybe 2010). Shortly after, Adobe skipped SVG support which already never was close to "easy to edit". I'm not collecting embarassments... 😔

[loukash]

10 hours ago, JoJu said:

in AI I named the drawing area for the IDC (Item Description Code) they are used for to illustrate what's going on.

Try this:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/script-to-put-artboard-names-in-text-boxes/m-p/11628329#M253858

I just tested this script in AI CS5 and it works.
It had some quirks like no text color or something. The default text color is white, but you do get text boxes with the artboard names that you can move on each artboard and that will be included on PDF pages.

I'm not really familiar with JavaScript, but for a scripter it should be also easy to modify it in a way that it simply exports a list as a text file.

But to convert the list into Affinity artboards names might be a bit more complex because Affinity is not scriptable (yet; but it's been already acknowledged in the forum that they are working on something.)
Last year I have demoed a simple Keyboard Maestro (Mac only) macro that makes use of Affinity's rudimentary but existent support for MacOS UI scripting. The macro was literally clicking into the Layers panel and naming layers by pasting text from a list. Let's see if I can find that post…

Edited December 1, 2022 by loukash

[loukash]

19 minutes ago, loukash said:

to convert the list into Affinity artboards names might be a bit more complex

Actually, you don't even necessarily need to convert the now available text objects to artboard names:

1. In Illustrator, run the above script.
2. Name the layer with the text boxes something like Artboard Names (or whatever makes sense to you, just give the layer a unique name).
3. Move all the text boxes onto the artboards, otherwise the AI PDF preview will ignore them.
4. Save the *.ai with PDF preview.
5. Open the *.ai in Designer.
6. All your artboards are there, each with a layer named "Artboard Names" and a nested text object with the original AI artboard name.
7. Select one of the "Artboard Names" layers in the Layers panel.
8. Go to menu Select > Select Same > Name
9. Disable one of selected "Artboard Names" layers, all other selected layers will be disabled as well.
10. Since their respective imported parent layers are now disabled, the text objects are only visible in the Layers panel and don't print.
11. Optionally, you can then paste the imported names into the Artboard name field on the layers panel.

(Ä Gruess us Basu)

[JoJu]

Good morning Loukash,

merci vümo for your link to the script, it looks promising and is a better workaround than copying and pasting names out of screenshots of the drawing pane table in AI.

Although while I now see my mess of layers in still growing AI files and also see that the shapes are imported, just not grouped as symbols it might be better to start the project completely over. I already used Bridge to create contact sheets of all exported illustrations and I already re-created the symbols of AI as  AD symbols (just better  ) I start hesitating to bring old AI's mess into fancy new AD files.

(Gruess z'rugg üs Soledurn)

 

[loukash]

4 hours ago, JoJu said:

the shapes are imported, just not grouped as symbols

That's because Affinity can only import data supported by PDF, not proprietary AI data.

[JoJu]

I tried to run the script, but no result so far. I'm sure I'm doing something wron.

I first copied the text out of the forum post you liked to.

Opened a new editor file and pasted it in.

Saved the file as "artboardnames.jsx"

Tried to run it in a AI file.

So far no textboxes with names became visible.

[loukash]

In AICS5:
Datei > Skripten > Anderes Skript > dein *.jsx wählen
Hat nicht funktioniert?
Vielleicht etwas nicht mitkopiert?

Versuche dies:
Artboard Name To Text.jsx

Wie gesagt, das Originalskript erstellt weissen Text. Kann man im Skript oder erst danach leicht ändern.

[JoJu]

Dein Skript hat 54 Zeilen. Ich hatte das 2. von BrightShadow kopiert, das kommt auf 105 Zeilen. AI Version hier ist 26.3.1 (bei CS habe ich die Nummern nicht mehr präsent, aber die aktuellste Version hat schon 27 davor. Dahin werde ich jetzt updaten)

Dein Skript funktioniert prima! Vielen Dank!