Dealing with a mess

[CES020]

Greetings all, happy Saturday to you all. I have a customer supplied file that came from Freehand, sent to me in a pdf. It seems all of their outlines came across as a real mess and I need to clean them up.

I've contacted the customer and they told me "just fix it, I'm not dealing with the graphics guy again. Send me the bill for it".

Okay by me....

However, it's a REAL mess. All the outlines came across as thousands of tiny segments. Selecting the segments and welding together seems logical (and works), but there's so many segments and so many overlapping segments, it's almost impossible to get them all without getting ones I don't want.

Here's a screen shot of it. I could probably fix this fairly easily in Corel, but I'm trying to do it in Illustrator.

Any suggestions? Ideas? Getting another file is not an option. I don't mind charging them for it, but I'd rather not spend 8 hours working on it as I have other things I need to be doing.

The attached drawing is nothing more than outlines, but in wireframe view.

Thanks!
Steve

 

[Techman]

holey moley,,

good luck.

I am so glad I am out of that world. I turn it away now.

 

[SqueeGee]

I'd check with the Vector Doctor.

 

[Craig Sjoquist]

wow what is it only thing I see is a 45 with a circle around it the other is what ???? lol good luck lol yes vector doctor

 

[Malkin]

Try things like assigning a stroke, convert stroke to outlines, then do an inline to get back to the original size. You may have to experiment with whether or not it's compounded.

Why not on corel if it was faster?

 

[CES020]

Why not on corel if it was faster?

The finished product is printed and we don't print, so it'll be subbed out. I have had problems in the past taking things into corel and then back into illustrator and having the colors end up incorrect. I'm sure it's user error, but it's something I'm deathly afraid of on this job. It's a rush job, it's good money, and I need to get it done and know it's right. I don't have the confidence if I take it over to corel and bring it back, it'll be right and I don't know how I'd know if it wasn't, since it's got so many colors in the final piece.

 

[Malkin]

Understood. I will frequently move from one program to another just because certain steps are easier, but only with basic enough art that I can reset the colors in the final print file.

 

[SebastienL]

If you don't need to cut it, I'd just open it in photoshop at the final size and adequate resolution, flatten and tiff it. Depending on how big this is you can also rasterize from Illy. Select all then from object menu: rasterize. Choose the option you need.

If you must absolutely keep it in vector, try selecting all the segment that make up one shape and "add" from the pathfinder menu,then expand to make one path, although I,m not sure if it's gonna work.

 

[ABPGraphics]

print it out on you paper printer in blk & white - scan it in and vectorize

 

[CES020]

Yes, it needs to be cut to profile, so that's the issue.

I'm slowly working it out in my head. I think I can lock the main shapes under these messes and use the pathfinder to weld them together. I'm working on it now. I just redid all the circles and numbers, deleting all those 50 segment circles. It wasn't too bad.

It's also about 70" long, so it's not a little bitty image.

 

[bob]

That mess looks very much like what happens when software product A 's strokes are imported into software product B which doesn't understand product A's strokes. Only this time on steroids.

Perhaps that might be a clue as to how to deal with this Chinese fire drill.

 

[CES020]

I agree Bob. Looks like it totally hacked up all the strokes from Freehand.

It's not so bad. I've got it worked out for the most part. I just locked the items under these, selected large sections at a time and used pathfinder to unite them together. It's working fairly easily. Just takes a little time since it's such a large piece with so many things on it.

No big deal, it's easier than I thought it would be.