Jason, you are right re actual illustrators who work for various forms of print or digital media. But for those of us who use .ai to design buildings, banners, signage, photomurals, etc. It's a real problem. "Illustrator" needs to change its nomenclature and toolbox.

As a company outputting huge banners and wraps, scale is an issue. Our output software is 1:1. We must upscale before the RIP. If a piece is scaled wrong from the client, it can add days to production. A simple change would not need a workflow workaround. That is time. Time is money. File size is not an issue really anymore. Give me a 1:1 large file any day. Banners should not need more than a 200dpi photo anyway. Ive seen 100dpi photos come out great on large files. And most photos look like **** re-rendered above twice the native dpi. So link the file, and send the package. Increasing the canvas size makes me less likely to buy a competitors product that has a scale option. I should not have to break out a calculator when designing a graphic. Which I do now often. It sucks. And before you say get better at math, I'm talking about this bracket is 3.375" from the left and 4.788"w by 2.7933"h and my scale is 1"=3". Instead of just typing those numbers I now have to figure each out, or make it an transform it by 33.333%. Time is money. reaching for a calculator (which always disappears) is also problematic

I don't see this as a problem with Illustrator, but with workflow and artwork practices. If you work in architecture engineering or mapping, as I do, you work mostly to a scale. Very little is output at 1:1. CAD is a different proposition and Illustrator is not CAD. It's not rocket science working to scale. Wanting a canvas 100m wide, or infinite, is not sensible to say the least. Rethink your workflow and what you are doing... even a different application. I wouldn't argue against a canvas twice the current limit, but this ongoing request is probably not that well supported in reality. I've never heard any Illustrator user in professional practice, apart from right here, raise the canvas size as a problem, so not convinced it's even an issue. Even companies outputting huge banners and wraps ask for scaled artwork as their gear isn't up to dealing with 1:1 artwork. If you are concerned over proofing, print extracts at the final scale; that's the traditional proofing process. The screen is never going to give you an exact representation of print output. Bigger canvas = bigger file size = stretching Ai beyond it's object handling abilities.

@abode you have a troll named "trackhorse" here. See my latest Tweet with this comment's date.

When you consider the lies, obfuscation, recalcitrance, and schadenfreude, one is forced to conclude that the entire staff of Adobe is Republican

Come on @Yogesh. We talked about this "problem" in a survey over a year ago. Adobe has been aware og this issue for many years, and they need to address this. Adobe needs to be more open and tell the users that they are working on a solution, but that it will take time. Even an ATA would be better than nothing at all. If we hear nothing for months/years, we believe that you just do not care about the users. We have just merged with another company that uses Corel, and now I have a problem defending the use of Adobe, just because of the size issue.. Please

I also would like a canvas document size to be about 10000x bigger, or no limit. I regularly work on design that need to drawn at scale larger than 227"

I would appreciate this as well... when you render something out in Blender, say for a tradeshow booth, you need to be able to see a raster image that might be 20 meters in size.

I need to produce a vinyl for a wall that is 20ft x10ft and incorporate some raster elements that need to be seen "in real scale" to check for fidelity.

"…multiple problems…" You are right. ARRRHGHH indeed

Comes back to my point of if you need to have a canvas to place artboards, why can't the canvas size be set by the user? If you're designing icons, you can create a canvas of a few hundred pixels. If you're designing for large format print, you make the canvas a few metres across.

Thus canvas size is user generated, so the program is always running efficiently.

trackhorse there are multiple problems, not just raster image resolution mistakes that can occur with artwork that is not created at 100%. Off the top of head I can think of - precision of joins then having to manually zoom in to check at 100%, effects like gradients have to be checked at 100% for banding, working with eps cad files is a nightmare (rescaling and checking calculations etc) and then overlaying vector art in AI at rescaled size. ARRRHGHH! Then there is the chance you haven't done something right and need to recheck everything again. When you are doing multiple walls with wallpaper say in a museum with raster images, copy, graphics with cad files and crazy deadlines, and then your print supplier wants artwork in 1200mm wide strips to minimise mismatching - it gets very complex. Previously Illustraor used to do an infinite pasteboard but something changed around the time they did mulitple artboards - maybe 10-15 years ago.

Yes, vector art is indeed "infinite". The only problem is related to images that—due to ignorance or inexperience— are not vector-ized (jpeg, tif, psd, etc.) and are inserted into artwork at an improper resolution.

There is no reason to scale.. its vector.. This is the most ridiculous issue ever.. Vector scales infinite without an issue..
A 100"/100" file saved is the same size as a file saved when scaled at 10%. So why do we need to work in scale.. Every thing should be 1:1.. Its all about Adobe Illustrators code.. An AI file is a proprietary dated filetype.. it needs to change. Period.

I don't see scaling as an option , why scale? That's extra. You can forget to scale back 1-1 when printing or in your printing software. And that's gonna cost money everytime. Illustrator must fix this. I really can't see why they haven't fix it yet. There's alot of users who gave good reasons. Still no luck. This is a big problem!

While I would prefer a scale setting (perhaps with a tie-in to the print dialog to alert the printer), over a potentially resource-hogging "infinite" artboard, I would also like to mention that Bill seems a pompous *** with a desire for an ePenis enlargement.Also, plenty of pros use multiple artboards, despite the ridiculous insinuation that those that use them are amateurs. Artboards keep things tidy and human-understandable (maintaining relations between complex builds) and if you are outputting a hundred files named "left_side_booth_panel_section_c137_final_final_final.ai" I pity you.If you are concerned about "file corruption," the answers are simple... better DAM, Source Control, and better storage media. It isn't "store things 100 times so that there are now 100 files to corrupt and/or/lose track of/change when you have to modify the design"Source: a successful professional with 25 years in Illustrator. GTFOY "Bill." Also: "However, its much is harder to get that degree *then graphic design. "

Apparently an English degree is harder to get "then" an architechture degree :).

As an aside, to some extent you can already set your scale in a round-about way: All the size inputs accept math. So, if you have a 100cm x100cm design, you can just put in 100/10 for your object dims and you'll get the scale conversion. Do this on all your base elements (the size of your piece, mostly) and then just put in a HUGE warning that the item is 1/10 scale (I usually do this with huge text converted to paths and then turned into guides. Haven't had a print malfunction yet due to scale.

Speaking of "CAD design software", for a while I worked at a large architectural office. They used AutoCad which—although you could pick a scale for document print-out—designed everything, including skyscrapers, at FULL SIZE.

Wow.. get a coffee... I am not talking about infinite numbers of artboards at all.. I don't care about them.. this topic is to remove the canvas size limit... I think you are posting in the wrong board!!!
Also.. Infinite number of artboards is pretty stupid in my opinion.. way too much to go wrong!.

Bill,
I work in interior / office decoration and design and I work 100% all the time, especially in elevations.
I understand scales and why you think everyone should know about it. What I fail to understand is why you have to be a jerk about it. I too work for one of the "top" companies in my field and I really would love to be able to work at 100% in Illustrator.
Instead of having to work in scale export to 100% only to see paths dont connect and other irregularities that happen when scaling up. (which happen all the time even from the best architects, who are notoriously bad at forgetting minor details)
And I have seen 10s-100's million dollar projects go **** up because of this exact issue, so please stop with the ego stroking and realize that infinite artboards would make a lot of peoples jobs easier.

Thanks