Importing illustrator files would be nice, especially for logo work. For what it’s worth, I haven’t run into any troubles opening ai files in Inkscape and then saving them as svg, then importing the svg to blender.
You can export SVGs out of Illustrator as well. But Howard’s importer can create pretty nice polygon faces from the AI file, whereas the SVG importer will only bring in curves, which can get pretty ugly when converting to a mesh. So there’s more cleanup with the SVG importer, in my opinion.
Just a note: I’ve updated this addon to put the options in the file selector panel instead of the tool panel. Now it feels more like the other importers. Also, I just moved this addon into contrib, so that it should be available in the 2.70 release.
Thanks, howardt! I use this addon ALL THE TIME.
I hope we’ll still be able to dynamically adjust the settings on import. That’s a great part of this addon – finding just the right settings for each set of vectors.
Hmm, no, with the new method you can’t dynamically adjust the settings and see the effect right away. Let me see if I can get the best of both worlds, by having the options in the tool panel too and the tool remaining modal until you hit Return or something.
Good to hear – your code is a lifesaver. Thanks again!
Does this work on 2.70 as well? I unzipped the addon but it does not appear in the User Preferences to enable…
I just came across this. I do some illustration work in Illustrator, as well as 3D modelling. I look forward to testing this out. It would be great for setting up complicated designs in 3D.
Thank you Howardt.
Hi, I’ve just come across this lifesaver too, I create a lot of work using illustrator and plan to use some illy artwork that I can work from without having to redraw the files in Blender, I couldn’t find the addon in the list in preferences so I downloaded the zip from your Git Hub repository but got totally stumped when I had to go into terminal on Mac OSX to rename paths etc.
I opened the Tobl file in Text edit but everything I tried failed when I ran it from terminal, is there an easy way to get this installed that takes into account that the user is a complete numpty? Possibly and idiot-proof idiots guide? My Blender app is in this location: home$ /Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/2.70/scripts/addons if it helps.
Cheers 
Instead of GitHub, download the zip file from the link given in the first post of this thread.
Then find the place on your computer where the Blender addon scripts go. The path you quoted here seems to be it for you. Unzip the file there; it should create a folder called io_vector with some other python files in it. Now when you start Blender and go to the addons part of User Preferences, you should be able to find it under “Import-Export: Adobe Illustrator / PDF / SVG”.
Hello
I’ve used your addon with earlier blender versions with great results. But now I updated to 2.70 and it doesn’t really work anymore. I’ve only used it to import vector images made with inkscape and saved as pdf cause that seems to get the best results for me. But the problem now with the newest version of blender is that it hangs or suddenly exits blender. At first everything goes fine and the pdf is imported as mesh. Problems start in after I start editing the mesh. Editing is very slow and hangs after a while. And if I try to change editing mode from vertices to edges or faces blender stops responding.
And if I try to use a modifier to the mesh to clean it up, it crashes blender.
Not sure if this is because your addon or just some problem with the newest version of blender, but I hope this info could be useful to you. Your addon is very good and super useful. I hope this problem can be solved easily.
Brilliant. thanks
I’ll give this a go when i’m back from work later
Worked perfectly Howardt 
Thanks for developing this addon, it’s a lifesaver
This’s a amazing addon but still need some more works. Thanks!
Vuollet: if you can create a bug at tracker (use the ‘Report Bug’ button in the Addons column on https://developer.blender.org/) with some repeatable way of reproducing it – probably need a sample input file – then I can look at it. You can assign to me (howardt).
nirenyang: not promising anything soon, because I have other Blender bugs to attend to right now, but what kind of further work would you like to see?
Thank you for the work you’ve done :yes:
is there sth going on with this addon? i cant find it in the addons panel. upon manually installing it, i still cant find it :O.
Current version does not work in 2.72b. However, it DOES work in 2.71.
In 2.72 (the original release, not 2.72b) you could run the addon, but the options would be “greyed out” on import, so you couldn’t tweak the settings. In 2.72b it doesn’t seem to work at all.
As howardt mentioned, someone just needs to submit this to the bug tracker. (See how lazy I am?)
I keep a copy of 2.71 running for path imports when I’m doing that sort of thing. Works fine for me that way (I can copy/paste between 2.71 and 2.72b).
I’m confused as to why it is not working. This addon is in “contrib”, which means it is not distributed with Blender releases (though it is available as ‘testing’ with the daily builds). The zip file at https://sites.google.com/site/howardtrickey/pythonvector/io_vector.zip should work if you unzip it in the addons_contrib directory for your Blender installation (path will end in something like 2.73/scripts/addons_contrib.
At some point I had to change from the method where the parameters showed up in the operator panel, so that you could tweak them after the initial import, to having them all in the file dialog (I couldn’t figure out how to make it work the other way any more). I know this is more incovenient; sorry.
Just discovered this and seems to work fine. Many thanks Howard :yes: