I use Illustrator to create artwork for large murals and sculptures, and I have to use various hacks to make these work, some of which are quite annoying.

I also print stencils onto paper from a large format printer, and I am limited in how long I can print not by the paper or printer but by Illustrator, which is insanely frustrating.

I have no need of any bitmap/raster or pixel effects. I would be happy to disable those once the canvas exceeded a certain size.

Having a Large Canvas option would work for 99.99% of our workflow needs (making letters for signage).
We don't use bitmaps/rasters or any pixel effects, so we don't require Pixel Preview Mode.
This Large Canvas option would prevent us from having to do any of the 1/10th scaling workarounds like we currently do.
I would like this option!

@TG - I too design for the sign industry (20 years nearly) and use CADTools.

I would honestly not change my workflow in designing if they decided to change the canvas any bigger or infinite. It's better to design in the format which is used to distribute the design ( 11x17 ). Designers need to remeber who they are designed for and make it in an easily consumable size and format for the customer and production. I've gotten a lot of push back mentioning this before, but customers appreciate being able to scroll through a PDF and all the pages are the same size and there is no need to zoom in. Also, they can print it off. The layout of a sign design proof sells just as much as the design itself.

Designing at scale (to later be scaled up) isn't an issue for the vector art in an .ai file and for any raster aspects, all you need to do is make sure the DPI on the linked files is high enough.

Pre-Press/Layout could use a larger canvas in the, as they take a design and prep it for production. So 1 to 1 is a nice thing for them and having that native in AI would eliminate the use of other software or relying on RIP to scale things up. Not to mention the human error in junior-level positions.

AI really needs to add some basic CAD functions. Like scaling and measurements (like its competitors. People unwillingly use Coral because AI lacking some very basic core functions mentioned in this thread.

why would anyone need pixel preview with a file that large..
I suggest if you are doing the scaling approach.. have 3
a. The regular one at 227in x 227in (Max zoom: 64,000% and Min Zoom: 3.13%)
b. The large one at 2270in x 2270in. (Max zoom: 6,400% and Min Zoom: 0.313%)
and add..
c. xtra-large one at 22700in x 22700in. (Max zoom: 6,40% and Min Zoom: 0.0313%)
This should cover 99.999% of all instances.

Two canvas sizes is of no use. The idea of having a default canvas size (the current one is good in many cases) with the possibility to move to a larger one when required would be nice, but should have no restrictions or the option to scale in steps of 10.

2270in x 2270in would greatly help me.

I am oftentimes printing banners on 60" wide rolls of paper. Many times these banners are larger than 227 inches... It would also be really helpful to measure shapes in the composition without doing math.

Thank you for considering this.

I don't need pixel preview.

To be honest - while I agree that an unlimited canvas size with no restrictions would be preferable - I could live with this solution. On advertising artwork of this scale a 6400% zoom would be OK - and 55m+ artboard would solve a lot of issues.

Would raster artwork be able to be placed as well?

First, let me say that I do support this idea, and I would certainly take advantage of it. However, while an infinite work area would be great, and very convenient, scaling work is pretty standard practice (depending on your industry, I suppose). Know your resolution requirements and scales if working with images. I work in the sign industry, and use architectural and engineering scales all the time. I also do prepress work and handle a lot of huge prints. With Press Quality PDFs being our primary print output file, we understand the size limit for any PDF is 200", and we design accordingly. As long as your resolution is sufficient in the original file, everything can be scaled at the RIP, anyway.

CADtools is a very helpful plugin when it comes to scaling, but I really don't understand what the big deal is about working in half or quarter scale if working on a large piece.

As far as multiple artboards, our drawing layouts are usually 11x17. (That's a max of 247 artboards at that size in the canvas.) I'm not understanding what the difficulty would be in simply starting another document if I needed to continue beyond that.

I would much rather Adobe work on incorporating their own basic CAD functions and dimension tools, to be honest.

@ Rob Hutchings. Well said. My sentiments exactly.

That looks like a limit to me? The request is to remove it. ... a.k.a infinite canvas.

I don't want a 10x increase in canvas size at the detriment of limited zoom functionality.

My biggest issue with the canvas limit is not being able to bring in massive CAD files used for masterplanning/road improvement schemes and the like without some poor attempt at re-scaling.

This also means that while looking at this, you also need to be improving how Illustrator can be better suited to handling multi-million points/paths.

This feels like you're trying to find a way to fit this functionality into the current setup with an additional bit of code instead of overhauling what is a fairly archaic limitation.

Yesterday I got into a real world situation where the current limit severely compromise a project. I received some aerial photos for a nationwide GIS project, i have merged just a couple of those (.tif) pictures in PS, but their size is higher than 5 mts side. I wish I could trace 2 or 3 combined pictures for tracing and get e.g the detailed borderline of lakes, swamps, that require a flat representation without reflections of light or waves.

Until they resolve this just use 1/10 scale, very simple. Move the decimal point over one digit and there you go.
I'm terrible at math but I have found this very simple and useful. There are also scale conversion calculators out there if you want to do something other than 1/10.

I agree, it's 2019, how is this not a feature yet? Designing large scale signage would be much easier if we could design it the actual size needed rather than needing to scale down.

I've designed banners at least that size. You just have to vector-ize everything, design at 1/2, 1/4, 1/8th, or whatever works size, and provide **very clear** instructions to the fabricator. For instance, I put the final size right on the file.

To help, I use a very old-fashioned proportion wheel. An image of the one I use is attached, so I guess they still make them.

Why should there be any limit on physical scale at all?

This is vector modeling software, so therefore should be able to handle precise sizing in every unit and scale from nanometers to parsecs. Rhino is a good example of this – in that case, an ellipse is an ellipse, regardless of whether it's 2" wide or 2 miles.

I currently have a request to make 25' wide banner. That's 300 inches...It would definitely help if I could actually work to scale.

Join the prerelease if you want updates on this..

Yes I would be considering using other software too (after more than 30 years with Illustrator) - but still noone has answered my simple question.

Adobe: can we please have an update on whether this will become a new (actually old) feature in a future release and timings.

Why can't one huge artboard be an option when you define a new document - I seem to remember this was how Illustrator used to work before multiple artboards was introduced.

I am currently running into problems where the PDF files I receive for production are larger than 300 inches. When I open the PDF in Illustrator to make changes, the art file is resized. Therefore I am unable to re-save as a PDF for production. We are now having to look into CorelDraw since their max canvas size is not limited to 226 x 226 inches. Please let us know if this fix is coming out soon. This info will help us greatly.

Trackhorse.. so you are a developer and you understand how to do this?... glad you know how to do their job..
To do it is not just a click of a button. The code for page is probably in almost every aspect of the application.. Im sure its a huge task. so stop whining.. its coming just be patient.