Grouped object in Adobe Illustrator

[befehr]

When opening Adobe Illustrator files that contain grouped objects, those object are not grouped when opening in AD as they are in Illustrator. There are groups, but they seem to be random.

Is this normal behavior of AD? If so, will there be a fix in the future?

[Alfred]

The Affinity apps don’t read the native Illustrator data in the file. They can only read the PDF stream, so you’re limited to whatever is included there.

[befehr]

I know what you are saying, and that makes sense, however when I open the same files in CorelDRAW the grouped object are maintained. 

[MikeW]

With an Illustrator pdf, I believe CD opens the AI private data.

[befehr]

2 minutes ago, MikeW said:

With an Illustrator pdf, I believe CD opens the AI private data.

The result is the same whether it's the native ai or pdf. So, you are saying that CorelDRAW accesses data the AD does not?

[firstdefence]

As an exercise...

 

1. Created an ai file
2. Created  a few box shapes
3. Selected the box shapes and duplicated them
4. I selected the original boxes and grouped them
5. I created a New Layer and a new Sub Layer
6. I dragged the duplicate boxes to the Sub Layer
7. I saved the file and opened it in Affinity Designer 
8. AD displayed the group as a Layer with Sub Layers representing the boxes
9. It did the same for the New Layer and the Sub Layer

Ad doesn't distinguish between a Group or a sub layer.

 

Illustrator.

 

Affinity Designer.

[MikeW]

2 hours ago, befehr said:

The result is the same whether it's the native ai or pdf. So, you are saying that CorelDRAW accesses data the AD does not?

 

Yes, I am saying that. CD is able to open AI files directly. How well it does depends on the contents or construction though. It's pretty good at it. 

[befehr]

41 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

As an exercise...

 

1. Created an ai file
2. Created  a few box shapes
3. Selected the box shapes and duplicated them
4. I selected the original boxes and grouped them
5. I created a New Layer and a new Sub Layer
6. I dragged the duplicate boxes to the Sub Layer
7. I saved the file and opened it in Affinity Designer 
8. AD displayed the group as a Layer with Sub Layers representing the boxes
9. It did the same for the New Layer and the Sub Layer

Ad doesn't distinguish between a Group or a sub layer.

 

Illustrator.

 

Affinity Designer.

I did something similar, creating groups of circles. On one layer,  in one group I have a group within a group. When I open in AD, there are no groupings.

 

[firstdefence]

This is the file I made: Grouped or not.ai

[befehr]

As predicted (on my end anyway), AD does recognize layers but not grouping. CorelDRAW does recognize both.

 

[firstdefence]

Corel Draw, Illustrator, and Affinity Designer are all propriety formats that give their user certain benefits, un fortunately they also make it difficult to translate from one program to another, honouring Layers layouts and grouping is one thing but Corel Draw doesn't always play nice with AI files and will remove certain features that have been done in AI.

 

Sometimes it's about finding a solution, albeit a bit clumsy and Child Layers seem to be that solution, you could export as an SVG. 

 

Update: removed Child Layer.

 

In Illustrator

 

SVG opened in Affinity Designer

 

Grouped or not copy.svg

 

[befehr]

Well, back to my original post. If other programs can read ai better, or maybe I should say "more reliably", then perhaps Affinity could add that to their list of improvements. :-)

[abarkalo]

this is always a big issue for me. I buy a lot of graphics stock art - objects that are places very closed together, and when opening in AD directly and becomes incredibly tedious to re-group, especially when there is no lasso select tool in AD.

However, one quick work-around: open the file in Illustrator and save as SVG. Then open the SVG in AD - this works for me. The only issue is that are often issues between EPS, AI and SVG files. For instance SVG is the common design language that both AD and AI read with good fidelity. But AI has different shading and coloring that is specifically only to AI.

[Old Bruce]

7 minutes ago, abarkalo said:

... I buy a lot of graphics stock art - objects that are places very closed together, and when opening in AD...

Perhaps a word to the stock art owners as well as here.

[abarkalo]

what do the stock art owners have to do with this? For the most part, the stock art is fine if it opens in Illustrator, and it's grouped nicely and laid out in smaller artboards. Nothing wrong there.