System Administration

A detailed guide to all the administration and configuration tools in Impact Plugin for Adobe® Illustrator® including administration concepts, system maintenance and upgrade and installation help.

Detailed information regarding the running version of the plug-in can be displayed from within Illustrator when the plug-in is installed.

This information is useful when reporting issues or checking for upgrades.

This is accessed from Window > Arden Software > Impact CAD > About menu item.

See Impact Compatibility for details on the PDF export settings required to work with the Impact Plugin for Adobe® Illustrator®.

The plug-in is provided as an .msi installer named IllustratorImpactPluginInstaller.msi

Running the installer will take you through a series of options, though it's likely that simply accepting the defaults will be sufficient to get you set up as needed.

It's possible to use the plug-in across multiple compatible versions of Illustrator, details of which are covered below.

Having started the installer, proceed to click Next, or Cancel to exit the setup.

The installer will attempt to locate the plug-in directory for the most recently installed version of Adobe Illustrator, assuming this is the one you wish to use with it.  You should make a note of this location, in this example that's C:\Program Files\adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2019\Plug-ins\Arden Software for CC 2019 (23.x.x) builds

If you click Change, you'll be given the option to browse to a new directory in which to place the plugin. You can always copy this file (IllustratorImpactPlugin.aip) around manually later, should you wish to make the plugin available to other versions of Illustrator, as detailed later in this article.

Next, simply choose Install to begin the setup.

Once it has completed successfully, you should see the following. Clicking Finish will exit the installer.

From Windows Add/Remove Programs (aka Programs and Features), the installed product should appear as Impact Plug-in for Adobe® Illustrator® 

Using the Windows plug-in with multiple versions of Illustrator

As mentioned above, it is possible that you can utilise the plug-in from multiple compatible Illustrator versions. This is achieved either by:

1. Manually locating and copying the plug-in (IllustratorImpactPlugin.aip) file between the default plug-in directories for each version of Illustrator.

• Locate the Arden Software folder within, for example "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2019\Plug-ins", and copy it and its contents to "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2017\Plug-ins" and/or "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2018\Plug-ins"
• You will need to restart Illustrator for the plug-in to be picked up and available
• Make sure to check and update your preferences, as they will NOT have been copied over using this approach

2. Defining an additional plug-ins folder within Illustrator's preferences.

• From within Illustrator, go to Edit > Preferences > Plug-ins & Scratch Disks
• Tick to enable Additional Plug-ins Folder
• Browse for the directory where the plug-in is located. This could be the original install location or a common folder you have previously copied the plug-in to.

If you expect to use the plug-in between various versions of Illustrator, it is advisable to override the default install location to save you have to manually move or copy the files around. A good example would be "C:\Program Files (x86)\Arden Software Ltd\Illustrator Impact Plug-in" for the 32-bit version, or "C:\Program Files\Arden Software Ltd\Illustrator Impact Plug-in" for the 64-bit version.

It is advised, though not mandatory, to place this in a sub folder named "Arden Software" to keep plug-ins organised. It is also recommended to install the plug-in using the second option and for the user to maintain a custom plug-ins folder, as this will not require any additional work between upgrades of Adobe Illustrator.

Saved Preferences

The Impact Plugin for Adobe® Illustrator® stores its preferences within Adobe's own preferences files such that they are maintained and available following upgrades of Illustrator, or the plug-in.

It's possible to clear or delete the preferences should they become corrupted, however this topic is not covered here and may affect other installed plug-ins. Please refer to Adobe's own help system for further details.

Note, the default plug-in preference settings what they control is described here within the Feature Reference article.

System Requirements

Impact Plug-in for Adobe® Illustrator® 2 can be installed on both Windows, both 32 and 64-bit variants, and Mac operating systems (64-bit only)

Windows o/s version compatibility: 7, 8, 8.1, 10

Mac o/s version compatibility: 10.13: High Sierra (Lobo) (Released 25 September 2017) or later.  Currently, the Mac plugin is compatible with only Intel Chipsets. Please contact support to request further compatibility options.

Make sure you also check Illustrator compatibility and Impact compatibly for the plug-in before proceeding to install.