.ai file won't open in Affinity Design

[eoinmagi]

Hi,

 

Hopefully someone will be able to help me, apologises if this is a stupid question…

I’ve been sent an .ai file which won’t open in Affinity. See attached photo.

I’ve downloaded a trial of illustrator and the file opens fine, the problem I’m having is that whenever I “save as” in illustrator as any type of file (say, .SVG) and open it in Affinity, the layers are in a different order( and there are hundreds of layers so moving them would be very time consuming)

I’ve noticed that in Illustrator the file is viewed as “Overprint Preview” with the layers in the correct positions, is there any way I can use a similar view mode in Affinity to view them in the same order?

Or, actually open the .ai file itself in Affinity?

I hope this makes sense!

[stokerg]

Hi eoinmagi and Welcome to the Forums,

As you've found out, we can't open the native AI file.  We need it be saved with the PDF stream, as advised in the error message you attached.  So in AI if you open the file and click File>Save As make sure the format is set to AI and click Save.  You'll now get a window with some options.  Make sure 'Create PDF compatible file' is enabled and click ok.

You now be able to open that AI file in Affinity.  Due to the AI format being private, we are limited to reading the PDF data.  You also won't be able to save the file as an AI file in Affinity but you can export it out as a PDF or other format.

[eoinmagi]

Thanks for the welcome, and help.

yeah, I did do that, but the problem is that the file shows the layers in a different order.

See the attached files .ai file shows the correct order of layers, the Affinity shows the wrong order of layers.

The black ink layer is under the yellow. The black ink layer is made up of hundreds of layers, so it's not a simple matter of moving one layer on top of another.(unfortunately!)

I was hoping the problem was a viewing mode?