idea Open an .AIX file in Illustrator without the Plug-in or login. in ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud Ideas

Open an .AIX file in Illustrator without the Plug-in or login.

FrancisHourigan1 — Fri, 20 May 2022 18:18:17 GMT

When I export an Illustrator file (.AIX) from ArcGIS Pro on a Windows machine, I would like to open that file in Illustrator on a Mac without having to login to AGOL/Enterprise or the Maps4CC Plug-in. The main reason is that Illustrator is updated frequently and the M4CC plug-in is not. This causes issues with logging on to AGOL/Enterprise in the plug-in and I can't access my file. The plug-in is nice for accessing data layers from my portal but if I have a .aix file that I have already put together there is no reason for me to have to login.

Re: Open an .AIX file in Illustrator without the Plug-in or login.

wayfaringrob — Wed, 11 May 2022 21:27:47 GMT

Yessing the heck out of this. I'm I used to finish most of my ArcMap maps in Illustrator but the extension, which was intended to replace the direct .ai export, is literally unusable (see BUG-000145439: .aix files exported from ArcGIS Pro do not display properly in Adobe Illustrator). I have never been able to get an .aix to open.

The best workaround I've found is to just export as a PDF and deal with the messiness of the layers. It's a huge pain but at least they open and you don't need to mess with the f'ing plugin.

Re: Open an .AIX file in Illustrator without the Plug-in or login.

JeremyWright — Tue, 17 May 2022 22:53:07 GMT

@wayfaringrob I'd encourage you to report issues you are having with AIX - my team works with the Maps for Creative Cloud team, and FWIW we fixed the BUG you quoted in the 3.0 release (out soon).

You can easily report a bug and provide repro data (such as a Map or Project Package) as well as steps through https://support.esri.com/en/report-bug - no need to make a phone call!

As far as opening an AIX without M4ACC - that's unfortunately not gonna work.

Adobe were the ones who mandated this workflow using a plug-in, as they previously closed the AI file format many many releases ago. So this is what we have to do to pour Pro content directly into Illustrator.

If you have challenges with the login requirement, please report them as bugs through the same form (https://support.esri.com/en/report-bug) so that the appropriate team can address them in a future release. I do know that the team has worked on some login UX issues in the upcoming release of Maps for Creative Cloud as well.

Re: Open an .AIX file in Illustrator without the Plug-in or login.

wayfaringrob — Tue, 17 May 2022 23:01:39 GMT

@JeremyWright thanks, I have done that. Good to know.