Freehand to Illustrator EPS slice and dice

A problem that I recently identified and solved: A complicated vector shape designed in Freehand, saved as an EPS and opened in Illustrator will potentially be sliced up randomly.

First of all, Freehand has always been the more intuitive illustration program. Granted, I may be biased since I learned Freehand before I learned Illustrator. But I still feel this way even after being impressed for years by Illustrator's versatility.

I am heartbroken -- yes actually deeply heartbroken, on medication, crying daily -- that Adobe will be killing Freehand. I can only hope that they learn something from this fine program and user interface before they strangle it quietly in the night.

Now that that's out of the way, here's a workaround for one little inconsistency between the apps. While they both output several types of EPS-formatted files, Freehand has problems opening them up for editing again, unless it was created by Freehand and had its Freehand data saved in the file. So, there's something different about the way they handle these things.

I recently had a situation where I had exported a complex shape from Freehand as an EPS. I suppose it may have had close to 100 anchor points or more. When I opened it in Illustrator, it had been sliced into three or four random slices, horizontally. I'm guessing that Illustrator did this to make the complex data more manageable on import.

I tried exporting as every type of EPS from Freehand (Macintosh EPS, MS-DOS EPS, Generic EPS, etc...) and then bringing it into Illustrator, to no avail. Each of them produced a sliced shape.

I also exported an Illustrator file (.ai) from Freehand with the exact same art, then opened it in Illustrator. This version resulted in no sliced illustration.

I suppose the moral of the story here is, when working between these two apps, double-check your work for consistency and compatibility.