For the past few months I have not been able to open .ai files created with the most recent version of Adobe Illustrator. I opened a ticket with tech support and they are COMPLETELY USELESS. It doesn't help that they don't speak and understand English.
The files I can't open will open and close just fine with Illustrator. However, they just hang when I try to open in Coreldraw 2019. I have all the latest patches loaded and I have uninstalled and reinstalled Coreldraw. If I open these files with Illustrator and save them to a legacy format then Coreldraw will open the file. This shows that they are NOT compatible with ai files like they advertise. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THIS BUG COREL???????
I use both CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator extensively. But I send any AI-generated artwork to CorelDRAW in AI CS6 format. Nothing later than that. Plus I have to make sure certain kinds of effects are "flattened" or "expanded." Some effects, such as Illustrator's Art Brush and Pattern Brush effects, don't translate at all to CorelDRAW if they're still live. The effects must be expanded into editable paths. The newer effects in Illustrator CC, such as Freeform Gradients, don't come across at all.CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator have a good amount of overlap of similar features. But there are enough differences, both subtle and major, that I find it impossible for one application to be a complete replacement for the other. My shop is in an environment where we have to handle a lot of Corel-generated files and whole lot of Adobe-generated artwork as well (particularly from clients). The only reliable solution for us to run both programs. It's a more expensive "solution," but at least we're not trying to force one application into being something it is not.
Well, Corel claims ai file compatibility. That was true until Illustrator 2020. Since then can't do anything with it. Corel needs to get off their asses and fix the issue.
Any claims of "compatibility" have always been a very loose claim. I've been using both of these programs and moving files between them for a really long time. They've never ever had 100% compatibility between each other. That even goes for basic things like accurately importing objects filled with a gradient. Corel finally worked on that problem a bit in the last couple or so versions of CorelDRAW. Same for transparency effects. It's still not perfect though.The only way Corel can make CorelDRAW import Illustrator files with 100% accuracy no matter what is by properly duplicating every unique feature in Illustrator. They've never done that. But the same goes for Adobe in respect to importing CorelDRAW files (CDR file import into Illustrator is very rudimentary; I have better luck importing CDR files into Inkscape). Additionally little things like patents can get in the way of one piece of software duplicating the feature set of a rival.Regarding importing AI CC 2020 files, that's a pretty unreasonable ask. It's not practical at all to expect a software company to make a graphics file import filter be able to import the very latest version of a rival's software. When moving artwork between Illustrator and CorelDRAW it is very common to have to export files in earlier version formats. As I said before, some effects have to be flattened, expanded ("converted to curves") before the art can be exported. Some features and effects have to be disregarded or rasterized into pixel form because they're completely incompatible. Plug-in based effects make the situation of importing Illustrator files even more complicated.If people are sending you Adobe Illustrator AI files they're going to have to make adjustments to those files so you can import them properly. That means saving down to an earlier "legacy" version (like CS6). It also means finalizing every "live" effect possible. It also means basic stuff like converting fonts to outlines. So many users are just plain LAZY about doing that.