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I have a document with many artboards, and I need to repeatedly export artboards in pairs as 2-page PDFs. Each one is a front/back page of a brochure.
For example, artboards1-2.pdf, artboards3-4.pdf, artboards5-6.pdf, etc.
Is this possible in Adobe Illustrator CC?
It's not directly possible. Illustrator artboards aren't "pages". So there's no awareness of spreads.
You can create additional artboards.
Artboards can overlap each other. So merely create a new artboard on top of artboard 2-3 as a "spread" artboard. When you output the PDF, output the spread artboards rather than the individual artboards.
I found a solution that works for my specific situation.
I recorded an action that involved manually going through and doing a "save as" a PDF for artboards 1-2, then repeated the process for artboards 3-4 and so on, until all artboards had been exported as 2-page PDFs.
I am now able to run that action and spit out the 2-page PDFs I need.
I hope this helps someone else in a similar situation.
Cheers, Kevin
Instead of using the file/export command, you can use file/save as. Choose Adobe pdf as the file format and then select the Artboard range you would like to combine:
After hitting the Save button, you'll get the usual .pdf-Dialog where you can control the usual settings like bleed/trim etc.
The way that I do "spreads" in illustrator is to combine artboards. Put the 2+ artboards next to each other, connected by an intersection but not overlapping, then go to the artboard tool and drag the inside edge of the outermost artboard to cover the other artboard(s). After that, when saving to a pdf, it still picks up one artboard at a time but since you combined everything to one artboard it should save the way you want it to.
