I am a signmaker and have been for going on 20 years. I have worked for many shops over that time before owning my own and have used Illustrator for most of those years. Im sure Adobe gets different questions about imporvements all the time, but here are a few of my own from experience.
1. Scaling. I frequently have to manually scale my artwork within Illustrator. Which means a majority of my time is spent doing math to call out my scales. Software additions for Illustrator run in the hudreds that offer scaling function, as well as callouts, but how about a little ruler scaling love from Adobe? Can we finally get a scaling function for the ruler? Or get rid of the 227in max size? I know many sign shops that dont use Illustrator because of this exact problem (which forces them to use CorelDraw).
2. Better line controls. I often vectorze customer supplied artwork. I currently scan it into Illustrator, vectorize. Save. Open into Flexisign. Edit the lines, then export as ai and re-open into Illustrator. maybe look at thier line editing tools to see what I'm talking about.
3. I would like the ablity to free transform placed objects like photos. I often need to add perspective to a placed object. Opening Photoshop for this one simple task is a timekill. I can crunch verticly or horizontally, but I cant distort perspective.
I use Illustrator everyday, but am no pro. Maybe I'm missing existing functions? Please set me straight politely if I am not aware of something.
Thanks