I have a lot of ‘assets’ in PDF and SVG formats, but I’d like to use them in Expression Blend for a WPF.  My first attempts to import these files was rather unsuccessful.

In order to get anything vector based into Blend, it pretty much has to be XAML.  It would be nice if it had some sort of converter to bring ’standard’ vector formats like PDF and SVG directly into Blend, but it just doesn’t support it.

I figured that was no big deal because Expression Design, nominally a vector graphics editing program should be able to import the two most common vector file formats, right?  Well sorta.  If you try importing a PDF, it won’t be listed under a “Supported File Formats”.  But if you either rename it to .ai (Illustrator) or do a * File Name (show all files) listing it will import PDF files as “Adobe Illustrator - PDF compatible”.

What about SVGs?  Basically you have to convert an SVG to a PDF and then do the above process.  You can do this using an open source vector drawing application called Inkscape.  Inkscape my support XAML natively, but from what I’m hearing it is still a bit buggy.

I think for all my future work, I’m going to export directly to XAML from Illustrator using a plugin.  We’ll see how that goes.

Frankly I think Microsoft should just include PDF (with a .pdf file extension) and SVG support in the Expression studio.