Creating an multi-page, variable diptych package?

Question

My goal is to be able to have a set of diptych/triptych templates that allow me to create and preview multiple layout configurations in a single custom package.
I started by creating 4 user templates, 600x447px diptych, 600x447 triptych, 447x600 diptych, and 447x600 triptych.I quickly realized these templates aren't good for much more than a single page preview. I can swap photos by dragging from the preview thumbnails, but I can't seem to copy the template onto multiple pages to test different photo combinations and placements and compare all in the same package. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be a way to easily bounce between templates- by clicking on a different template all my work is reset.
I thought I could avoid this issue, by creating another custom package at a specific size and create different layouts on each page. The only problem with that is, there also doesn't seem to be a way to duplicate a page, I would have to set up the individual cells for each new page, which is a bit awkward if I want to play around with many different photo combinations.
Is there a better way to do this, or am I stuck just creating one template at a time, exporting and then comparing all my variations as jpegs?

Answer 1

You don't say what OS you are using and which scripting language you are thinking of doing this in…
This is a sample that may get you started done in JavaScript so it's platform independent with the exception of my 'mac style' file paths.
If your on a PC it may just be a typo to set to C drive or whatever you call them things…
If you are on the mac OS then it should just dump a load of PDF's on your desktop.
You say about a multi-page PDF but don't think Illustrator can do this unless its been added with multi-artboards in CS4?
Others would have to let you know that…
#target illustrator
var docRef = app.activeDocument;
with (docRef) {
var docName = baseName(name)
var pdfOptions = new PDFSaveOptions();
pdfOptions.pDFPreset = '[High Quality Print]';
// Turn all layers off
for (var i = 0; i < layers.length; i++) {
layers[i].visible = false;
// Turn each layer on
for (var i = 0; i < layers.length; i++) {
if (i == 0) {
layers[i].visible = true;
redraw();
var layerName = layers[i].name;
var saveAsPath = new File('~/Desktop/' + docName + '_' + layerName + '.pdf')
saveAs(saveAsPath, pdfOptions);
} else {
layers[i-1].visible = false;
layers[i].visible = true;
redraw();
var layerName = layers[i].name;
var saveAsPath = new File('~/Desktop/' + docName + '_' + layerName + '.pdf')
saveAs(saveAsPath, pdfOptions);
//close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES);
function baseName(fileName) {
var nameString = '';
var extOffset = fileName.lastIndexOf('.');
if (extOffset == -1) {
nameString = fileName;
} else {
nameString = fileName.substr(0, extOffset);
return nameString;