Trim View and overlapping artboards

[mike boruta]

I like the option of "Trim View" to temporarily hide artwork that outside of my artboard. But when I have two overlapping artboards and I try to use trim view on one of them Illustrator combines the area of the overlapping artboards and trims everything outside of that "merged" artboard. This defeats the purpose of using trim view for me. Is there any way to correct for this?

FYI - my artboards are overlapping because I'm using them on a large map file. The map covers a large area and there are multiple printed map products coming from it, each with their own extent & artboard (so I can quickly save out pdfs based on artboard extents). I usually just create a large rectangle with a hole cut out that is the same shape as the artboard I'm working on. Trim view seems like an easier method of accomplishing the same thing, except that it doesn't seem to isolate artboards if they are overlapping.

[Tina_Irvine]

Hi @mike boruta,

I haven't come across this situation before, so I can't speak directly to it. I can offer a possible workaround that might help, though. Are you using layers? Layers may help since you can show/hide items anywhere in your file. Perhaps a combination of clipping masks and layers might work to your advantage..?

[mike boruta]

Thanks Tina. Yes, I'm using layers, hundreds of them! (Map files can get pretty complicated.) In my case, I need to leave all the layers on and the artboards serve as the extents of different maps that get exported to pdf. This "Trim View" feature would be a nice one-button way of narrowing my focus while working on a large map file with multiple artboards, except that Illustrator treats any overlapping artboards as one artboard, which sort of defeats the purpose of that feature. I think it must a bug. If it is not a bug, I wish there was an option for "Trim View" to not merge overlapping artboards. Thanks for reaching out though. 🙂 

[Tina_Irvine]

I agree that in your case, not merging artboards would make sense. Definitely suggest the feature, as @Ton Frederiks has mentioned 🙂

[Ton Frederiks]

I think it would be a useful feature request.

Uservoice is the place for that.

You can check if this already been proposed and vote for it, or create your own:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/