Participant

Answered

How to resize my Canvas in Illustrator

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
July 30, 2010
22 replies
1450984 views

Hello,

can anyone help me out. I would like to rezise my canvas in Illustrator and I dont know how to do that!

Why: I'de like to fit my AI design on to an other AI, real size object and the Illustrator canvas is to small to handle the design in a proper way. So my design is to large to fit the real obeject. the question is therefor how can I make my Canvas larger?

Hope for your support and help.

Thanks

Gert van de Cappelle

How to

Correct answer Eric23155489ll2s

Here's a link to resize your Canvas (not artboard) in Illustrator.

Enjoy.

Show previous replies

A

Anonymous

Jacob,

If there's no canvas in Illustrator, how come I get an error message saying, "Artboard size can not be bigger than CANVAS size", when I try to make a large artboard?

R

Rodrigo5C3A

Participant

I just had the same problem, I know it's 10 years after the original post... hahaha

Just group all the items that you have so that they can go beyond the canvas, then make a new file with an artboard the size of that and your canvas will stretch to that size, though not a lot more. Then copy and paste into the new file.

I just made a file 16K + pixels high and it worked.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Hi,

Thanks, but before I continue, for context I will state that I've used many types of design/CAD packages over many years to produce various types of media and program recipes industrial robots, and therefore aware of the requirements to export/import files in formats that can be interpreted in a way that gives the desired result. I should also state that I mostly don't have a choice about what applications I get to use, from an internal and external client perspective, and am experienced in finding workarounds for software bugs and inadequacies.

The source program in question is CorelDraw 19 (admittedly an older version) and the file contains 9 pages each being 370mm square. If I export this as a CS6 (I know, it’s the newest version that the software supports) it creates an AI file 9 artboards wide. These artboards do not fit on the arbitrarily sized canvas and get truncated (please see the "canvas.png" image. This truncation is clumsy and really shouldn't occur. I would have hoped that the canvas would be dynamically resized. You can see that AI has attempted to position one of the artboards on the next row but failed to move the content there.

In any case, the work around is straightforward: break the original document up into two with 5 and 4 pages, export separately and then import, cut the 4 artboards and paste them into the other document. Then for completeness arrange into a 3x3 array or artboards. Whilst this is achievable, it's inelegant. I attached the result as "canvas2.png" for completeness.

The question is, can the default canvas size be altered such that all the artboards are rendered correctly? I'm guessing no and not even change the canvas size from within an open document. I still don't understand why "canvas" exists at all, it appears to be an arbitrarily set, non-editable constraint?

Illustrator CS6 only supports the normal sized Canvas.

It's kind of weird that it's even possible for CorelDRAW to place the artboards like that. But that's what's happening when exporting and importing files. It's always a translation.

Large and normal canvas files is an either/or situation. You cannot convert between them - only create a new file in the desired Canvas size and then copy/paste.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Gert,

There is no canvas in Illustrator.

In Illustrator you have the (about) 227" x 227" Workspace, and inside that the Artboard, which corresponds to the page (in print), and which holds the artwork that is printed or saved as PDF; in the newest versions, it is also used to crop for exporting artwork in other formats. You set the Artboard size with File>Document Setup>Artboard, or in the newest version with the Artboard Tool (DoubleClick).

C

Conor4400

Participant

Hi Jacob,

I've been tooling around the internet for a while now looking for answers and I was wondering if you could help! Do you know of any way to change the size of the default 227 inch workspace?

Thanks!

Conor

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Conor,

There is no way.

Have you seen this post, which came after your post here?

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3201140#3201140

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