Weird Adobe Illustrator CS3 problem

[domencolja]

I've been working on some new files today and I've stumbled upon a ridiculous problem thet occurs when saving untouched AI files to EPS AI8 format files. Let me put is straight: a blank artwork with no elements saved to a 5MB big file;) I know, I know...)

First I had like 150K path points in it and the files were 8MB big. Than I started deleting layers and objects to see which were the ones that clubbed the file to size death. One by one they were going to the trash bin, but at the end I deleted the canvas wipe clean and the files were still saved at a whopping 5MB size.

Has this happened to anyone else before?

p.s.: I'm restarting the program right now to see if it was a memory glitch of some sort. But it really is weird, damn...

[domencolja]

No shit, AI8 saves the brushes palette within the artwork? Thought this was an advanced feature of AI CS (and later). And on top of that I was certain it was limited to symbols...

[domencolja]

Ok, lesson learned. NEVER leave homemade brushes active in the palette. Delete ALL (and this applies to symbols as well).

p.s.: I'm not talking about stroked objects here, just to clarify.
p.p.s.: Damn, I just lost three hours cleaning finished files because of file size. Silly me.

[nicemonkey]

As a side note it is always good practice to expand/outline any features you have created with illustrator, that goes for symbols, brushes and strokes. The reason for this is that whoever buys the file will not have the elements you have created and either the symbols, brushes or strokes will be turned to bitmap or the file will be bloated where illustrator tries to combine all the elements when you have it back to a version 8 .eps

I think we all learn this hard lesson at some stage! 

[domencolja]

But this struck me like a complete ignorant, man. I had no stroked objects in the artwork, everything expanded and "good to go" (like always). I knew that Illustrator saved the "file library" symbols within the file (even if the symbols were never used in the artwork), but I had no clue it did the same with brushes (at least not unused ones). I had around 20 grunge splatter brushes in the file library and "boom": all were saved along the empty canvas;) 5MB of never used brushes;)

p.s.: Damn, now I can only imagine how many works of mine were sold with a beautiful collection of brushes and symbols free, completely free of charge. Call me Mr. Charity;))