1 Correct answer
From the Scripting Reference:
A documents color space, height, and width can only be set when the document is created. You cannot modify these properties in an existing document.
You would have to create a new document at the right size and move everything to the new document.
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Firstly… You could just save that snippet in to Illustrator's scripts folder, make a action that calls it via 'insert menu item' from the flyout, once you have the recorded and saved action use as a batch… The other way would be to have a purpose built script that does the whole of the processing for you… Much would depend up on the files in question where they are within your file system… If you need the latter then start a new topic this is an old thread… 
If you go down the action route don't forget that the script call will be forgotten by the app at quit… A much complained about issue…
Great tip about "Insert Menu Item". Once I placed my script in the Illustrator CS4>Presets>en_US>Scripts folder it showed up in the menu list, and I could access it through batch. I modified the script to be used in the batch, and I'll include that here:
app.activeDocument= doc;
var myVisibleBounds = doc.visibleBounds; //Rect, which is an array;
myVisibleBounds[0] -= 20; //left coordinate (use negative values to add artboard)
myVisibleBounds[1] += 20; //ltop coordinate
myVisibleBounds[2] += 20; //right coordinate
myVisibleBounds[3] -= 20; //bottom coordinate (use negative values to add artboard)
doc.artboards[0].artboardRect = myVisibleBounds;
Thanks for your help, Muppet!
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OK -- this will challange you a little bit, in that you have to do a little conversion from VB.NET to JS, but this should do the trick for you. It should be easy enough. At minimum, you'll understand the differences a little bit.
A few caveats:
1) You may or may not find that you desire a consistent margin on a rectangular-dimensioned collection of pathitems. Since you chose a "square" excample, you may or may not have considered that.
2) This has been tested on CS6. I beileve that it works back to CS5, but I forget when (what version) the vertical scale was changed so before that it probably needs some adjustment.
3) I used the variable abMargin to allow you to adjust easily the percentage that you desire in margins for your artboard. Note: '10' = 10%. While I could have made the code a little cleaner with less variables, I thought that spelling it out may help you understand the logic better.
4) I noticed in a previous post's example the use of Artboards(0). While the documentation states a zero-based array value, in my testing I could only get it work as a 1-base array. I'm sure that I am missing something that someone else may spell out.
5) Lastly (thank goodness) in the future, you may be better served by opening a new discussion and referencing the old discussion link. That's just my opinion, though. No harm, no foul.
So here you go. Hope this helps. Good luck! -TT
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Public Sub DrawBorderPcnt(app As AI.Application, abMargin As Double)
Dim aDoc As AI.Document = app.ActiveDocument
Dim vb = aDoc.VisibleBounds
Dim width = (vb(2) - vb(0)) 'left-right
Dim height = -(vb(3) - vb(1)) 'bottom-top
vb(0) -= (width * (1 + abMargin / 100) - width) / 2 'left
vb(1) += (height * (1 + abMargin / 100) - height) / 2 'top
vb(2) += (width * (1 + abMargin / 100) - width) / 2 'right
vb(3) -= (height * (1 + abMargin / 100) - height) / 2 'bottom
aDoc.Artboards(1).ArtboardRect = vb
End Sub
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PS: If you still need help in the conversion, let us know and if someone doesn't get to it first, I'll try to help. -TT
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