The Impact Plug-in for Adobe® Illustrator® offers features for handling Impact generated PDFs within Illustrator, with an optional linked preview within Impact - Windows users only.
The plug-in is useful to those wishing to create artwork for Impact-created structural designs whilst minimising certain historically manual tasks.
This help guide details the plug-in's main features, along with its system requirements, installation instructions, as well as FAQ and troubleshooting articles.
To begin with, we'd recommend having a look at the Feature Reference section to understand what the plug-in offers to Illustrator users.
Illustrator Compatibility
The latest updates of Impact Plug-in for Adobe® Illustrator® 2 officially are known to work with Adobe Illustrator from 2018 (v22.0) to 2022 (v26.0), for 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions, and on Windows and macOS - further details on system requirements are available in System Administration. Please enquire about compatibility with any Illustrator versions not listed as needed.
For Windows, make sure you install the correct 32/64-bit plug-in, as required for your Illustrator version. If you are unsure, you can check this information within Illustrator via the Help > About Illustrator menu. In the below example, this is shown next to the version, i.e. 23 (CC 2019) & 64-bit. Only the 64-bit edition is provided for macOS.
You'll also need to make sure you're using a compatible version of Impact, further details in Impact Compatibility.
For details on how to install and use the plug-in with multiple versions of Illustrator you may have installed on the same machine, please refer to the System Administration help section.
Impact provides several PDF export features that need to be configured for the Illustrator plug-in to correctly identify and process the PDF documents correctly. Whilst some of these PDF export options are present in older Impact versions, improvements have been made with each release specifically to complement the development of this plug-in. With the addition of the Live Link feature, the plug-in is now best utilised with Impact 2019 R2 SP1 (11.1.2.0) or later. However, for those simply wishing to open and process Impact produced PDF files without the use of Live Link, for example, in order to recreate usable and locked (from edit) layers, it is possible to utilise any version from Impact 2014 (8.0.1.0) or above, but at the loss of more advanced features like automatic artboard alignment and the display of meta-data relating to the structural design.
The following options are configured for the specific PDF Import/Export Master Tool Setting (MTS) to be used to produce documents intended for graphic creation. Whilst such setting changes can be overridden during each Impact PDF export, we suggest a permanent change, or dedicated setting is configured. Those with sufficient user group privileges can make these changes within Impact by navigating to Options > Master Tool Settings, and locating or adding a new MTS under General Tools > Import / Export Settings.
Within the MTS configuration, the relevant options to configure are located under Export > Adobe PDF, and should be set as follows:
Required
- Create spot colours for each palette: Enabled
Optional, recommended
- Create a layer for each exported palette: Enabled
- Create a path for each exported palette: Enabled, and Compound Paths selected.
- Enable overprinting: Enabled
- Respect drawing order: Enabled
It's anticipated that future plug-ins and Impact-Illustrator workflow enhancements will require updates to the Impact-produced PDF content, at which point the minimum Impact compatibility version will be updated.
You'll also need to make sure you're using a compatible version of Adobe Illustrator, further details in Illustrator Compatibility.
Supported Languages
The Impact Plugin for Adobe® Illustrator® is currently available in the following languages:
- English
- German
- French
- Spanish
- Portuguese (Brazilian)
- Russian
The plugin will automatically select a suitable language based on the running locale of Adobe Illustrator. You will likely have to restart to see such language changes take effect.