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lawrenceb97649632
Participant
September 19, 2018
Question

Indesign is moving ai files when I update the link

  • September 19, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 1815 views

I linked AI files to my indesign document and scaled and adjusted the frame and I had to relink them because I changed something in ai.

This ai doc has multiple artboards with multiple things on each that I have zoomed in on in the indesign doc, so many artboards actually appear in the indesign doc multiple times just being cropped and resized throughout.

When I click update (or restart indesign and open the doc) it says 'the ai file has different layers than the imported version. the link will be updated with the source's current layer visibility' which I didnt see as an issue because I deleted a layer I needed to get rid of in ai. that same error then pops up a bunch of times and I have to keep clicking ok (probably for each link to that ai file. once I click ok to them all, I see that most of them have been moved upwards within their frames in indesign... no resizing occurred.

I have unchecked 'preserve image dimensions when relinking' because earlier it was also rescaling things, but I dont see any options that might solve my moving issue. any ideas?

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1 reply

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DBLjan
Legend
September 19, 2018

InDesign is able to do enable/disable the layers in a placed Illustrator file. If you update your Illustrator file, dont change the ammount/arragement of layers. Doing this, InDesign doesnt know if and what to show, and will update with default options.

If you keep your layers identically, InDesign wont alert with "the ai file has different layers …" and everything should look fine.

But be aware of the Import-Options: Illustrator-files, like PDFs, have different ways to treat the objects on the page: you can link the graphic with underlying (transparent if white) page dimension, or use the object as bounds.

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lawrenceb97649632Author
Participant
September 20, 2018

Ok I have simply turned off the layer I needed to in my AI file thru indesign but the issue persists. once I do that the drawing within the frame moves upwards... I have a lot of linked files so it isn't practical to re-import them all

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DBLjan
Legend
September 20, 2018

before:

after:

Ive made a little test:

I have an illustrator-file showing 3 lines of text, also I made a copy of this file.

What you see on the first forum-image, are 4 test-images (left) and the corresponding image linked to the copy of my illu-file (right).
On the left page I used the method "medium" and the image-box shows the page A4 as bounds. I also made a zoom on the file as test, below.

On the second forum-image:

Ive deleted text 'layer 1' in the copy of my AI, refreshed the links (the ones on the right side), and see what happens:

While I used the method with the medium as bounds, the positioning within the indesign image container doesnt change.

But if you place imported as 'object', moving object around in AI results in new boundaries, e.g. x/y=0/0 is "layer 1", now 0/0 is 'layer 2'. While placed as a page/medium (doesnt have a englsih client) the 'layer2'-pos doesnt change x/y=34,271/48,818 mm.

As you see, its key to know how you imported your ai.

I could imagine to fiddle a script that runs thru the .ai's and reimports them back with given import options, but you need to whatch and correct the placement then anyway. Its a pile of work, but I guess youre smarter next time.

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