Small issue related to illustrator .ai exporting

I still do a lot of manual 2D rendering in illustrator.

When exporting linework from Rhino, it exports the rhino layer colours as the illustrator layer colours.

Problem is that illustrator uses the layer colour as the “selected item” colour.

If in Rhino no object colour is specified (colour based on layer colour), they stroke in illustrator as the layer colour also.

Which means you can’t see what is selected.

The user workaround would be to select all the curves in rhino and object-specify them as black before exporting… But what if you want the colours in illustrator?

Seems to me the more normal practice in Rhino is to specify your colours by layer, and object colour specification would be more for exceptions.

Illustrator works the opposite way. All colours are specified per object, and the layer colours are only for showing what’s selected. The layer colour can be arbitrary and is only choosable so you can select a contrasting colour from the object stroke colour.

I guess what I’m getting at is it would be really helpful if there was an option to use the rhino layer colour as the illustrator stroke colour, then have the exporter choose the opposite colour on the colour wheel (contrasting) to use as the illustrator layer colour.

For whatever it’s worth…

Hey Ryan,
To me, the easy workaround is to leave objects colored by layer in Rhino. This lets the objects retain that color in Ai. Now in ai, just shift select all the layers in the layer pallet and choose a single color for selected objects. Who cares about layer colors in Ai after all since they’re just there for UI (versus layer colors in cad/rhino which can affect the colors of things)