Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 4/29/2009

Question
Hi,

We have a file that has close to 1 000 000 vector objects in it.  Basically it is 5 words made up of bubbles.  When trying to open the file lately, we get an out of memory error and Illustrator CS 3 can't preview the document and crashes.

What we have to do is work on the file in smaller sections.

Originally, thinking that RAM was the issue, we upgraded a computer from 4GB to 8GB of RAM.  Illustrator would eat up about 6GB of the RAM and still fail to open the entire document.

The machine that is Running Illustrator CS3 is  dual quad core Xeon July, 2008 Mac Pro with 178GB free hdd and a 160GB swap partition.

Any thoughts of how we could work with the entire file?

Answer
Hi NW,

You are maxing out Illustrator with 1 million objects.The fact that it is using up 6 gigs is nuts! The only option I have for something this large is to work in outline not preview mode. However, most professionals do work in sections when it comes to something this large. It is more cumbersome and will result in slower work time and crashes.

Keep working in sections and then reassemble prior to completion.

On a side note, have you tried using symbols to create the bubble look instead of individual objects? That would save you a lot of memory.

Kevin