Scale issues when importing to Illustrator

I have a project that measures to 70 feet in Rhino and when I export it as an .AI file that is set for 1:1 the size in illustrator is off. It is roughly 40 inches. Very confused.
Also, is there a way to scale an object by a scale factor in illustrator? I would like to scale my 1:1 drawing down to 1/16 or 1/8 so I don’t have to go to CAD.

Thank you in advance.

At a a guess I’d say it’s a units issue.

When you export selected from Rhino to Illy, you should get a dialogue that asks you the scale you want to export to. You need to ensure that the units in Rhino and the units in Illustrator are the same if you want 1:1 (otherwise you have to do a bit of math). It should work fine - it does here.

Scaling in illustrator: Object>Transform>scale. You can scale uniform or assign different X and Y values (Horizontal and Vertical in Illustrator land).

Steve

And doesn’t Illustrator have a size limit or something? 70 feet seems awfully big at 1:1…

–Mitch

Aaah yes, I looked straight past the 70’ bit. Illustrator artboard limit is 227"

Scale as appropriate.

Thanks for the responses. Illustrator does not prompt me with a unit screen but rather just opens right up. Rhino does prompt me and I select 1:1. I imagine it would be tough to scale back to normal size in illustrator.

Hi,
Yes, Illustrator will not prompt for units. It will just see “x” units and make that “x” whatever the units are set to in Illy
You must make sure your units match in both applications if you are going to use 1:1 scaling. So make sure both applications use the same units (inches I guess you are using).
Rhino: Properties>Document Properties>Units
Illustrator: Edit>Preferences>Units

Next you need to make sure that your art in Rhino is not larger than the maximum allowable Illustrator artboard size which is 227". If so, scale.

That should do it

1 Like

Thank you for the replies gents. I have got it working now and am scaling properly when importing into illustrator. I suppose I can create a page in rhino and scale to that, but still would love to figure out how to use a scale factor like in cad…
Thanks again
brobes05