Looking for a script that will generate a grid of empty artboards at a specified size and padding.

[futuremotion]

I'm not sure if this is out there, if not I'm going to make it myself.

But, I was wondering if anyone has a script, plugin, or tool that will generate a grid of empty artboards. I need to quickly make 1300 artboards at 16x16px size in a document that I'm working on. I have quite the script collection and haven't seen anything like it. Can someone direct me to a solution? It would be an ENORMOUS help as making that many artboards manually is going to be a huge pain.

Any help at all is greatly appreciated!

Jay

[futuremotion · Accepted solution]

Edit: I just realized I can do this easily with the New Document window. Although it caps at 1000 artboards. Sorry for the stupid request, I should I have done more research.

[Disposition_Dev]

the artboard limit is an application limit. a script wouldn't be able to create more artboards than the new document window. the limit is the same regardless (although, the limit was only 100 artboards until quite recently). 

That said, you probably don't want a document with 1000+ artboards. It's unlikely to perform well, and it's a bit like tightrope walking with all of your eggs resting precariously inside one barely sufficiently sized basket. One corrupted or accidentally deleted or accidentally overwritten file could be a truly catastrophic loss. There are any number of ways to combine the documents into one after they've been saved/exported from illustrator.

I would recommend spreading your artwork out into smaller files to improve performance and drastically reduce the consequences of an unintended mistake. Better to lose 10 pages of layout than 1000.

[Disposition_Dev]

here's another (most definitely inferior) way to create artboards in a grid with padding. 

draw a rectangle at the desired artboard size and position. draw a spacer block starting at the right edge of the first rectangle, and having a width of whatever you want the padding to be. shift + option + click and drag the first rectangle to the right until its left edge aligns with the right edge of the spacer block you drew. then use cmd/ctrl + d to repeat the transformation (and since you copied while transforming, the copy is duplicated as well). repeat cmd/ctrl + d until you have a rectangle for each column you want. then draw a spacer block below any of the rectangles you just created whose height is equal to your desired vertical padding. select all the rectangles (minus the spacer blocks) and shift + option + click and drag them down until the tops align with the bottom of the spacer.. repeat transformation until you have the correct number of rows. delete the spacer blocks. select all. Object menu > Artboards > Convert To Artboards.

This is a really dumb way to do it. please.. nobody do this.

but it is indeed one way to do it.

[Kurt Gold]

Dilliams suggestion is not dumb at all. I'd call it a common non-scriptactional way that works pretty fluently.

One may simplify it a bit by drawing a large rectangle, use the Object menu > Path > Split Into Grid route to create the grid of rectangles, convert them to artboards, set the artboard sizes to whatever is required in one shot by activating the Artboard tool and finally rearrange the artboards with the corresponding command.