Floor plan in Illustrator, text issues

[kdubbie]

Hello, I want to thank anyone in advanced for any help they can offer. I've tried looking some of these up, but I just couldn't find an answer.

 

I create show programs for Trade Shows, which usually includes a floor plan of where it's being held, with all the booth names, booth #s, etc.

 

I receive a floor plan from someone as an AutoCad file and I need to bring it into Illustrator so that I can change the entire look of it. Bascially make it more "cartoony" (for a lack of better words) white booths with black strokes, a condensed font for the booth #s and extra condensed font for the booth names.

 

What I am finding VERY frustrating is when I bring the .dwg file into Illustrator, each booth name that takes up two lines, gets chopped up, so, say for example: in AutoCad

 

JOE SHMOE

ENTERPRISES

 

is all in one text box, but when I bring it into Illustrator, JOE SHMOE is one text box and Enterprises is in another.

 

Am I importing it wrong? Why do my text boxes keep getting chopped up? Does anyone know how to prevent this?

 

Of course, I would very much prefer to format every booth name at one time in AutoCad, does anyone know how I can select all Mtext on one layer, so that I may format everything at once?

 

Do I have to change the color of the layer to change the color of the text?

 

How do I change the Units from FEET/INCHES to points like in normal programs...

 

Does MText/polymorph lines make a difference for commercial CMYK printing? If it does, how can I convert it to Mtext to text and polymorph lines to normal lines?

 

Sorry for the long post and again, very much appreciate any assistance,

 

Kdubbie

[ReMark]

Just how do you bring an AutoCAD drawing into Illustrator? What file types are acceptable?

[kdubbie]

I am using the actual .dwg file. I open illustrator, then click open and search for the .dwg file. Once I click open, I get a dialog box that asks how I want to scale the floor plan. I Hit ok, and it opens....It opens just as I see it in AutoCad, but the text is chopped up.

 

I tried exporting as an EPS file, but that completely ruins the text once I open it in Illustrator, looks very bad

[skipsophrenic]

Have you tried saving the original drawing as a dxf and using that?

[f700es]

You are seeing single line text created with the dtext command and you want to see multi-line text created with the mtext command. I just tried this and this seems to be the reason.

Good luck

[tajanat]

Hi, @f700es!

 

I have the same problem as @kdubbie.

But I didn`t understand your answer, @f700es. What is the "dtext"?

 

Text in my AutoCAD drawing is created with the "mtext", but when I open it in Adobe Illustrator CS3 it becomes sigle-lined.

How can I keep it to be multi-lined?

 

Thank you in advance!

 

T

[tajanat]

how to convert dtext back to mtext in illustrator?

[tajanat]

Does anyone knows if this problem shows up also in Adobe Illustrator CS4 or CS5?

[tajanat]

how to convert dtext back to mtext in illustrator?

 

I found script for Adobe Illustrator called "join text frames" http://vectips.com/tricks/10-free-and-extremely-useful-illustrator-scripts/

 

It binds broken text frames perfectly. But it means that I have to jump from one group of text to another and repeat this action as many times as many groups of text I have.

And sometimes it lasts to long. So I would rather to open mtext proper in Illustrator.

 

I wonder if this problem disappears with newer versions of Illustrator!

[tajanat]

Have you tried saving the original drawing as a dxf and using that?

 

with dxf is the same as with dwg

[Alan Sheaffer]

Having the same problem a decade later, has anyone actually figured this out? The text is created using MTEXT, but when imported into Illustrator, the object becomes a group of single line type instead of a multiline type. Nothing in Autocad to Illustrator preserves a multiline text object?

[f700es]

Are you using a truetype font in ACAD?