Multipage Illustrator Documents
Last Updated on Friday, 03 July 2009 20:00 Saturday, 30 December 2006 22:06
Creating Multiple Page Documents With Illustrator - no bleeds
Adobe Illustrator does not provide for multiple page documents per se. It only recognizes a single page. However, it does provide for tiling printed output if the page size exceeds your printer's paper size. Page tiling is simply where the printed output is divided up into "tiles". Each tile is the size of one sheet of paper. Essentially, you setup the artboard to be a custom page size whose dimensions are in multiples of a single sheet of paper. Then you tell Illustrator to tile the output when printed. Following is a step-by-step example.
1. First click File > New and enter the page dimensions in the Width and Height boxes. In this case we will make the artboard four times the width of a single sheet of paper - 34 inches (4 x 8 1/2 inches). We'll leave the height at 11 inches.
2. Using the Grid tool (located under the Line tool), click once in the top left corner of the document to create a new grid that is 34" wide by 11" tall with zero horizontal dividers and three vertical dividers. Tip: With the grid still selected, click on the bottom left corner of the alignment box and make sure the X and Y values are 0. This will set your grid in the perfect location. (See the blue arrow in the graphic below)
3. Again, with the grid still selected, go to VIEW > GUIDES > Make Guides. This will create guides from your grid. Lock the guides and you are ready to design.
4. When ready, go to PRINT and in the Setup tab, set the tiling to "Tile Full Pages" and set the overlap to 0". Each tile will output as a separate page. Make sure the orientation under the General tab is set correctly (set to Portrait in this case) or the preview of the printed output will not match what you see below.
Tip: If you want to save the file as a multiple page PDF, don't use File > Save As > PDF, otherwise you will only get a one-page PDF the size of the artboard. If you want to make a multiple page PDF file, use File > Print to Postscript file then run the .PS file through Adobe Distiller.