Exporting with slices in AI doesn't respect Rasterize Effect settings?

Question

I have a series of thousands of vector objects imported from a DXF file, and sized to an artboard of a specific pixel size (10,160 x 10,160). I need to cut the images up into a grid of 1,024 x 768 pixel chunks - I have setup the 140 slice objects required to do this.

I need the exported images to have no antialising/subsampling applied. I have used the Rasterize effect to rasterize these objects without antialising, and they look just the way I need them too in pixel preview.

When I export the whole image using the File > Export dialog (to BMP or JPG or PNG) the resultant file is correct. However, if I use the File > Save Selected Slices dialog AI applies antialiasing to the images, seemingly ignoring the Rasterize effect, and making them unusable for my intended purpose.

Is this a know limitation, or is there a work around somewhere here?

I can't use the Align to Pixel Grid feature because it doesn't help with curves, instead it just insures that straight lines don't land between pixels (as far as I can tell).

I don't want to use multiple artboards, because of the hard limit of 100 (I'm not eager to do this is in multiple steps, but it might be a work around - say by using two matching files, one with 100 boards and a 2nd with 40).

Thanks!

Answer 1

After playing with this some more here are my conclusions, should someone else come along looking at the same problem.

The success I had exporting the entire image is due to the anti-aliasing option in the export dialog - not the Rasterization effect applied to the object. In other words, the implication that the Slice export function ignored the effect is incorrect.

However, since the Save Selected Slices dialog doesn't have an anti-aliasing option, I can't "get there from here." This seems like an oversight - are slices due to be replaced by artboards, or is the feature just not well developed? I don't know.

My practical work around is to split the file into two, and use 100 artboards in the first and 40 in the second. A kludge at best, but it works for now.