If you use Illustrator^R artboards to coordinate and organize your work, you will be interested in the new enhancements to Illustrator CS5. The first thing you will notice is the new Artboards panel which is on the bottom-right side of the workspace. In this panel, each artboard in your .ai file is listed much like layers are listed in the Layers panel. However, one difference is the list of numbers along the left side of the panel. This is the "export or print" order of the artboards. When we export your file as a .pdf or for import into another application, Illustrator will place the artboards in the order reflected in the Artboards panel. To reorder the artboards sequence, simply drag an artboard up or down in the list much as you drag a layer in the Layers panel. You will also see Move Up and Move Down buttons at the bottom of the panel, along with the New Artboard and Delete Artboard buttons.

Let's move over to the Tools panel and click on the Artboard tool. This will take us into edit mode. In this mode, we can move, edit, delete and make new artboards. You will also notice that the Control (Options) panel has changed to give us some controls for working in the artboard edit mode. We can easily switch from Portrait to Landscape layout and name, add or delete artboards. When we open the Artboard Options dialog box, we have several more options. Another timesaving feature is the new Paste in Place and Paste on all Artboards commands in the Edit menu giving the ability to copy/paste artwork between artboards or to all artboards at once.

Let's take a look at the Rearrange Artboards dialog box which we can open from the Artboards panel menu. It's a fast, easy way to rearrange the artboards in your .ai file by choosing from the five preset layouts. You can also control the spacing between the artboards and choose to move the artboards by themselves or with the artwork attached.

Finally, we have a new option in the Illustrator Options dialog box when saving an .ai file. You now have the ability to save all or a range of the artboards in your .ai file as separate .ai files.

*Adobe provided a review copy to me free of charge.

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