How To: Export Axure files to Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft Visio
Posted in UX design | Jan 31, 12:43 pm
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In the past I have been confronted by complaints that by using Axure my files will be in a proprietary format, and so cannot be easily shared among other members of the team. If you have the need to share work in an editable format without purchasing another license, the following method may be of use.
This method will get your Axure files into Adobe Illustrator, and from there you can easily export in a format that can be opened in Microsoft Visio.
Essentially, you need to print your wireframe pages to PDF. If you already have Adobe Acrobat Professional, there should be a PDF printer automatically installed. If not, you can use a freeware PDF printer on PC (I use ‘BullZip’, but there are loads out there).
In the Axure print dialog, select ‘Fit diagram(s) to page width’, and then print the wireframes to the PDF printer. I always leave this on default settings. Once you have your PDF, this can easily be opened in Illustrator as an editable vector image.
From there, you need to save from Illustrator as SVG format. The only option that needs changing is the Font Type to SVG. Everything else I leave on default. If you are getting some unusual artifacts and shapes appearing in Visio, you could try increasing the ‘Decimal Places’ property: but I find that the default renders the Illustrator files well enough.
Getting things from Visio or Illustrator into Axure are a little trickier. The latest version of Omnigraffle (5.1) on Mac will happily open Visio .VSD and .VSX files. From there one can export to PDF which opens perfectly in Illustrator. Otherwise, you can simply print to PDF from Visio to open files in Illustrator. However fonts can get a bit screwy with this option.
From Illustrator, you will have to save any graphics as .JPG, .GIF or .PNG and use the Axure image widget to import your art.
By Luke Perman
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