Flexi importing capabilities

[The Vector Doctor]

While most of my customers open my vectors through Illustrator and Corel some only have Flexi for doing so. Most of the vectors I produce I save down to version 3 or version 8 for compatability

However some vectors require that I save as a newer version

Transparencies, gradients, raster effects are issues

Knowing this, can anyone comment on what new version of Illustrator that Flexi will be able to open? V8 and v3 Illustrator files will not retain transparencies so I must save as CS5 or newer

Is EPS better than ai for effects?

Does Flexi properly import gradients, transparencies or raster effects?

 

[bannertime]

I just imported a CC file that had effects, gradients, and transparencies. They worked fine. The effect had been expanded into a raster though. Gradient wasn't a giant fill that was masked. It was actually a shape that was imported with gradient properties.

 

[ProPDF]

I can't answer your question but we have been having a lot of problems with Flexi 12 designer & Adobe Illustrator CS6/CC files turning strokes into gradients randomly. We have also had the text and logos change colors randomly but the stroke on them sometimes stay the same. Our files are 50-80 inches long and we have to unmask them when importing them to Flexi 12 just to be able to edit them first off and it's been a real pain having to edit each file in Flexi 12 designer before print. The only thing we have noticed is if we cut the file into 2 sections in Adobe illustrator CC then export or save as .AI, PDF or EPS we have a much higher chance of not having issues. We have tried merging all layers in Illustrator and leaving them as is. We have noticed Flexi 10 plays better with CS6 files but we have been chasing this Flexi issue since we got version 12.

Another problem we have had is bringing in a file with an Adobe illustrator CC AI,PDF EPS gradient directly into PM version 12 and the gradient is not smooth at all. It becomes very textured almost like a rock surface.....but when we do this we don't have the above mentioned stroke and text color loss.

I will say this. Caldera will handle all our Illustrator files perfectly as a drop and go scenario without issue at all. Flexi 10 and prior did have transparency issues I think which got fixed in 12. We had went back and forth and still trying to figure things out for a better workflow.

 

[GaSouthpaw]

The only part I can answer is that I always had better luck using EPS files from Illustrator in Flexi than I did using AI files. Strangely, though, Corel's AI exports sometimes worked better in Flexi than the EPS exports did.