Can I open AI files with inkscape
if so what do i have to do
or do i need something?

Thank yu
Dman

You can. I've only done it a little, but it seems to work. I don't know what limitations there are when you do this.

what do i have to do. because they look for Adobe program to open it and I dont have adobe.
thanks
Dman

Dman wrote:what do i have to do. because they look for Adobe program to open it and I dont have adobe.
thanks
Dman

This is instructions for Windows with Inkscape 0.47...

Open Inkscape first.
Go to File->Open menu.
Change "Files of type" to "Adobe Illustrator ... *.ai".
Choose the file to open.

Im sorry so late getting back to this post;

still cant open AI files, tried all different adobe lines and still no good get message Failed to load the requested file

From viewtopic.php?f=5&t=820

Inkscape relies on extensions for many of the file formats it can open and save. If a required dependency is not installed on your PC then Inkscape will not load the filetype extension and the filetype will not be listed in the save or open dialogs.

Not sure if this helps or not?

I tried the view topic post that was suggested and it did not help!
Could not find the listed info on what may have been missed during install. So I uninstalled program and reinstalled, no change cant open AI files.
I had a 30 day free trail of Adobe that has expired, Ii wonder if this is keeping me from doing what I want?
I did remove program.
Dman

any other suggestions on trying to open AI files?
Do i have some thing downloaded incorrectly?
Open something wrong?
Or do I just punt?

Dman

Dman wrote:I tried the view topic post that was suggested and it did not help!

What did you try? You installed Ghostscript? You made sure you included it in the environment path variable? And that didn't work? What was the error message in the extension error log after installing Ghostscript? You tried to convert the AI to PDF and that didn't work either? If so, how did it not work? Did you get a message saying conversion was impossible? Or the resulting PDF was blank? Or the resulting PDF was missing objects?

Thanks for the reply, yes i downloaded it,what is an environment path variable? I didn't or dont get a error log when it was installed i get a message when I try to open AI files it states " failed to load requested file C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Sandblasting Projects\Cobras.ai."
Im sorry but i don't know how to convert the ai to a pdf, i dont know what a pdf is
Sorry not very computer smart

Dman wrote:Im sorry but i don't know how to convert the ai to a pdf, i dont know what a pdf is
Sorry not very computer smart

If you're not very confident with computers, then installing Ghostscript won't be your thing. But if you desperate we can do our best to walk you through the process.

Before then though, the easiest way would be to convert the AI to PDF as I mention at the bottom of the post that Brynn linked to.

A PDF is another vector file, but is one predominately used by Adobe Acrobat Reader. It's a format that Inkscape can open without the need for additional software such as Ghostscript.