Hello, newbie here!  I'm excited about learning Inkscape.  I'm primarily interested in exporting graphics to a PCB layout program like KiCAD in order to produce PCB front panels for my new Eurorack modular company.  I have a large number of panel designs in Adobe Illustrator, all of which have at least 8 layers.  When I save these as an SVG file and open in Inkscape, all layer information is lost.  The same thing happens when I use Import to open the AI file.  Is this a fundamental limitation in Inkscape?  Will it ever be addressed?

I understand that I can painstakingly select each object in Inkscape and move it to a layer, but that equates to recreating the entire AI design.  I was hoping there would be some way to avoid having to do this.  Any suggestions?  Thanks!

If you have a sample ai file and the resulting SVG file to share here that could help.  I'm not at my makerspace today, but we have Illustrator there and I can see if there's a convenient workflow. 

FWIW, Inkscape uses special tags in the svg to characterize certain groups as layers. If Ai can output it's layers as SVG groups, it is a simple matter of making them tagged as layers using the Objects dialog.

TD

Hi Tyler,

Thanks for the quick response!  Here are the AI file and the SVG that was produced by Illustrator.  I look forward to your diagnosis!

Thanks,

Peter

Looks like Illustrator exported your SVG with the layers as groups. I would convert them to layers like this:

Very cool, Tyler!  That worked beautifully.  Perhaps it should be a sticky post, I can't imagine I'm the only one who had this dilemma?

Thanks, again!

Glad it works for you. :)

The forum comment-search picks up "Illustrator layers", so a sticky is probably not needed.

TD

Not to be a thread necromancer, while it might be easy enough to find that it doesn't need a sticky, this tip so should make it into a moving from AI to Inkscape guide.

There's also a new extension that does this automatically in Inkscape 1.2.