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nickh67186118
nickh67186118
Participating Frequently
January 22, 2020
Question

Unintended combined layers and clipping mask

  • January 22, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 1045 views

Scenario:

  1. close a file that contains several layers
  2. open that file
  • All layers have been collapsed into one layer, with all in a clip group.
  • The clipping mask uses the arboard as the boundary. Even after releasing the clipping mask most of the art (but not all) outside the artboard has been deleted.
  • The files I'm working with start life via 'Save As' directly to native AI file type from the SolidWorks drawing environment.

 

It's possible this is happening after 'freeze crashes' (Illustrator locks up and does not recover, must be killed in Task Manager) but I haven't noticed yet if there is a correlation.

 

This doesn't happen with every file, seems random.

 

As far as I know I'm not doing anything to cause this (the file configuration is as it should be when I close it), but please let me know if user-preventable or user-caused.

 

Obviously, if this is an actual issue, it would have to be 'red light' priority, as it blows away hours of work, across multiple files.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 24, 2020

This looks like either

- you can only open the PDF part of the file for some reason

- the file has only been saved as a PDF

 

A crash is a possible cause of this. Or saving over a network.

Please see how files work in Illustrator:https://youtu.be/IpDh8Y7q8yE

nickh67186118
nickh67186118Author
Participating Frequently
January 30, 2020

Thanks for the reply, and I saw the video - informative but not directly related (apparently) to any actions on my part: just doing regular, run-of-the-mill saves to native AI, every couple minutes, on a network drive. Seems quite clear these are coding issues -- perhaps the typical Windows and App instability problems, generally speaking. (I would rate Illustrator as quite unstable on Windows 10, with freeze-crashes and/or termination-crashes occuring around twice/day ... compare this to Mac OS and it's a lot.)

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 30, 2020

As I said. Saving over a network. Illustrator doesn't like networks. https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/illustrator-support-networks-removable-media.html

 

What's happening: the PDF part of the file somehow gets saved, the AI part gets lost. Some people have figured out how to fix their network in a way that Illustrator has no issues with saving.

 

If you want to file this as a bug: http://illustrator.uservoice.com

Makes no sense pointing it out to me, because I'm not even staff.

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