Is there some way to convert .Afdesign files to .Ai files?

[Midnight Design]

I was looking on 99designs, wondering if I should join a contest. I looked at one of them and they require a .Ai file along with a .EPS file. I found an online converter: Convert.io, but they don't support .Afdesign files. Another website 'supposedly' claimed that they have software to convert it, but it wasn't very useful (it had some links that lead to the same page). Does anyone know how to convert a .Afdesign file to a .Ai file without losing any quality?

Thanks, Midnight Design

[Callum]

11 hours ago, Midnight Design said:

I was looking on 99designs, wondering if I should join a contest. I looked at one of them and they require a .Ai file along with a .EPS file. I found an online converter: Convert.io, but they don't support .Afdesign files. Another website 'supposedly' claimed that they have software to convert it, but it wasn't very useful (it had some links that lead to the same page). Does anyone know how to convert a .Afdesign file to a .Ai file without losing any quality?

Thanks, Midnight Design

As far as I'm aware there is no way to do this. I wouldn't trust any websites that say they can either as we haven't released the specs of our file format.

[Alfred]

11 hours ago, Midnight Design said:

Does anyone know how to convert a .Afdesign file to a .Ai file without losing any quality?

Although you can’t export to AI format from Affinity Designer, you can export to PDF and then rename the exported file from *.pdf to *.ai. As far as I’m aware, Adobe Illustrator should be able to open the resultant file without any major issues.

[Midnight Design]

5 hours ago, Alfred said:

Although you can’t export to AI format from Affinity Designer, you can export to PDF and then rename the exported file from *.pdf to *.ai. As far as I’m aware, Adobe Illustrator should be able to open the resultant file without any major issues.

Thank you!

[scatterbrain73]

On 6/10/2019 at 6:16 AM, Alfred said:

Although you can’t export to AI format from Affinity Designer, you can export to PDF and then rename the exported file from *.pdf to *.ai. As far as I’m aware, Adobe Illustrator should be able to open the resultant file without any major issues.

Eh, not so much. I just tried it and it rasterized a good chunk of my file. The main issue was anything with effects applied to it. For instance, in Designer I had a bunch of objects grouped together and applied an outline effect to the group. Saved it as a PDF, then opened the PDF in Illustrator. The group was rasterized. Went back into Designer, removed the outline effect, and tried it again. This time the objects remained as vectors.

So... in short, yes and no. You can do it but if you want to preserve all your vector paths you first have to remove all effects from objects. An incredible pain, I know, but it can save you from having to start completely over.

[walt.farrell]

29 minutes ago, scatterbrain73 said:

... in short, yes and no. You can do it but if you want to preserve all your vector paths you first have to remove all effects from objects. An incredible pain, I know, but it can save you from having to start completely over.

To some extent that may depend on the PDF export options you choose. 

And to some extent you may find that the rasterization would occur with any of the vector output formats, not just PDF.

[Alfred]

On 11/7/2019 at 6:53 PM, scatterbrain73 said:

... in short, yes and no. You can do it but if you want to preserve all your vector paths you first have to remove all effects from objects. An incredible pain, I know, but it can save you from having to start completely over.

 

On 11/7/2019 at 7:25 PM, walt.farrell said:

To some extent that may depend on the PDF export options you choose. 

And to some extent you may find that the rasterization would occur with any of the vector output formats, not just PDF.

It’s actually nothing to do with the PDF export options. Like their predecessors in Serif’s ‘Plus’ range, the Affinity apps always render filter effects as raster, so if you want a vector outline you need to apply one or more strokes instead of using an outline effect.

[ashf]

Rasterization can't be helped anyway.
But Vectornator can convert its file to ai using Creative Cloud.
So you can convert pdf or svg to ai by importing them to Vectornator.