AutoCad to Illustrator hatch problem

[Anonymous]

I’m a graphic designer, not an AutoCad user. I have to place a lot of AutoCad drawings in a brochure.

I have to import them in Adobe Illustrator and do some minor edits: change text font and colors, hide and color some objects,...

The original layer structure should be preserved, which is why I can’t use PDF files (Illustrator can’t preserve PDF layers). So I think DWG is the way to go?

I receive DWG files from our R&D team. The import into Illustrator is perfect except for one thing: hatches are completely messed up. See the attached screenshot. They are converted to single lines (which is not a problem, although a real 'fill' should be better) but the hatch lines don’t follow the exact contour.

I’m not sure if this problem has to be tackled in Illustrator and/or AutoCad. I tried on the Illustrator forum but didn’t find a solution there. Neither did a search on google or this forum.

As said, i’m not an AutoCad user and I don’t have access to the software to do some tests. But this seems very similar to a known display render “problem” in AutoCad, where one must regenerate the view for a correct preview when zooming in and out. But I’m told this doesn’t change anything to the DWG file, it’s only a screen rendering thing. The drawing people that deliver the files don’t know how to solve this. But if I can give them some specific instructions for (re)saving their files, I can ask them to do this.

Any help is appreciated!

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> But this seems very similar to a known display render “problem” in AutoCad, where one must

>> regenerate the view for a correct preview when zooming in and out. But I’m told this doesn’t

>> change anything to the DWG file, it’s only a screen rendering thing.

Absolutely correct.

>> The original layer structure should be preserved

IMHO you can't return the drawing from Illustrator to AutoCAD without "damaging" some of the internal CAD-structure, so why should layers be preserved?

What are you doing with the files after you edited them in Illustrator?

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

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IMHO you can't return the drawing from Illustrator to AutoCAD without "damaging" some of the internal CAD-structure, so why should layers be preserved?

What are you doing with the files after you edited them in Illustrator?

---

Actually the layers transfers just fine. There is off course some minor "damage" and cleanup work (like changing line colors and thickness, remove "empty objects), but that's ok.

After the Illustrator editing I import the files into different InDesign layouts. InDesign can control the visibility of the layers, which is one of the reasons why the layer structure is important. Depending on the context of the layout, the imported drawing should have some layers turned on or off.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> some minor "damage" and cleanup work (like changing line colors and thickness, remove "empty objects), but that's ok.

IMHO dimensions are killed, blocks are killed, for me that are more than critical issues.

Isn't that the case with current version of Illustrator? Are these objects stay as dimensions and blocks even after inserting into Illustrator and exporting back to DWG?

>> After the Illustrator editing I import the files into different InDesign layouts. InDesign can control the visibility of the layers,

Well, from my (limited) knowledge about IndDesign ... viewport layer overrides as well as viewport-freeze are not supported. So if you look to AutoCAD layouts then these states are lost.

As from my understanding now you don't bring your result back to AutoCAD, why not plotting from AutoCAD to PDF (that can export the layer names too) and continue with PDF for your work with Illustrator and/or InDesign?

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

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IMHO dimensions are killed, blocks are killed, for me that are more than critical issues.

Isn't that the case with current version of Illustrator? Are these objects stay as dimensions and blocks even after inserting into Illustrator and exporting back to DWG?

---

I don't know what 'blocks' are but dimensions are perfectly preserved! Perhaps this was an issue in the past? See the import screen of Illustrator (CC 2017, most recent version). I don't need to perserve everything, but the drawing should look correctly.

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Well, from my (limited) knowledge about IndDesign ... viewport layer overrides as well as viewport-freeze are not supported. So if you look to AutoCAD layouts then these states are lost.

As from my understanding now you don't bring your result back to AutoCAD, why not plotting from AutoCAD to PDF (that can export the layer names too) and continue with PDF for your work with Illustrator and/or InDesign?

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I should clarify my workflow.

I don't intend to use Illustrator as a DWG editor. It's not CAD software. I only use Illustrator to do some edits to make the drawing 'print-ready' and make it visually more appealing (which cannot be done in AutoCad). If the drawing should change, this has to happen in AutoCad.

InDesign doesn't import DWG files. I import a DWG into Illustrator and save as PDF (or actually AI with embedded PDF). InDesign can handle the layer visibility of these PDF files.

So why not directly plotting a PDF from AutoCad? Well, the files really need some editing in Illustrator. Unfortunately the layers don't survive the Illustrator round trip. Ironically, Adobe Illustrator can import DWG layers but it can not import layers from it's own Adobe PDF format.

To sum up:

• Workflow 1: AutoCAD > DWG > Illustrator > AI / PDF > InDesign
  All is well, except for messed up hatches.
• Workflow 2: AutoCAD > PDF -> Illustrator > AI / PDF > InDesign
  Layers are lost, which makes it unusable for my case (unless I spend many hours of work to recover manually)

[pendean]

You need to fix, aka replace, the hatching in Illustrator. You own the file now in Illustrator. There is no cleaner way to solve the problem you observed.

[Anonymous]

Fixing the hatches in Illustrator would take ages I’m affraid. There are no real 'shapes' or anything in Illustrator, just a bunch of separate lines. The screenshot is only a small detail of the whole drawing, and i’m talking about 50 to 100 drawings.

Somehow I find it hard to believe that there is no way to import these hatches properly.

For example, is there no way to convert to hatches to ‘normal lines’ in AutoCAD, something Illustrator doesn’t have trouble with? By setting some save / export preference, or doing some menu command... Anything that doesn’t require a lot of manual work. Perhaps some actions that can be batched / scripted.

If not, thanks for the replies anyway!

[john.vellek · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

I have experienced this too. Surprisingly it seems to behave a bit better in 2007 file format and bringing into Mac Illustrator. 

To work around this you can explode the hatch inside of AutoCAD to create separate lines but you might still  have some cleanup to do.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

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To work around this you can explode the hatch inside of AutoCAD to create separate lines but you might still  have some cleanup to do.

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Exploding the hatch did the job, thanks a lot!

(2007 DWG made no difference)

Now I asked our drawers to explode all hatches in about 160 DWG files. Any way this can easily be batched? Without buying extra software or learning how to script AutoCAD...?

[john.vellek]

HI @Anonymous,

You might find it better to explode hatch only when necessary as the files will get bigger when the hatches are exploded.

At any rate, if your drafting team is familiar with the Action Recorder, they could run a macro when they open each file that does a qselect to isolate all hatches and then explode them.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

For now they did it manually but the recorder thing might be useful in the future.

Thanks for the tips!

[rvhuanteCMT7M]

This might not be the most efficient method of solving the issue, but in instances where I need to overlay texture in a drawing to represent wallpaper, tile work, or even complex wall hatches (ones that include arc's typically), I do this...

1) Hatch in the region that will have the texture (in AutoCAD, making sure it has a solid fill that has a unique color from any other fills in the drawing).

2) Exporting the drawing as a high quality PDF in the print options.

3) Import the PDF into Illustrator. Release all Clipping Masks

4) At this moment, the hatch looks like it fills the boundaries pretty accurately, however it's made up of fragmented shapes though, kind of like a Riemann Sum. Using Select→Same→Fill Color in Illustrator, select all of the fill shapes and then Unite them with Pathfinder.

5) Voila, you now have perfect regions with which you can make clipping masks for texture overlays! From here, you can open the DWG in illustrator and swap out the crumby hatches with the new ones.

[Anonymous]

Hi rvhuanteCMT7M,

That seems like a workable solution too. Thanks for sharing!