3. How to scale symbol definitions.. ( accumulated )

How to scale symbol definitions.. ( accumulated )

  • N

    Notice: Accumulated into mega-topic.

    ..from the bottom center, so that their instances are scaled the same.

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  • administrators

    @Nils Yes, this is a bit of a problem.
    Symbol instances are centered to a location.
    When scaling the original around a non-center location, the original is also moved.
    But movement of original is never applied to the instances.
    This is by design, and I;m not sure how it could be changed.

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    N
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  • N

    @vectoradmin Hmm, this is a bummer.

    While working with symbols I sort of got the impression they take a backseat in VS. Styled groups seem to be more powerful on themselves, which makes me question the purpose of symbols.

    For example:

    I could just clone a deeply nested, styled group a bunch of times and then do arbitrarily nested and targeted ( same style used multiple times ) style overrides. With symbols, this isn't possible at all.

    What are your thoughts on this?

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  • administrators

    @Nils said in How to scale symbol definitions..:

    I could just clone a deeply nested, styled group a bunch of times and then do arbitrarily nested and targeted ( same style used multiple times ) style overrides. With symbols, this isn't possible at all.
    What are your thoughts on this?

    If considering direct access to content, then cloning is more powerful. From "internal" storage point of view, clones are still duplicates of the original, while symbols (reference objects) are pure references, thus take much less memory (and file size).

    Some advantages of symbols:

    • organized in the symbols panel for quick reuse.
    • Override panel can override nested symbols (these are just regular "styles").
    • there is a Replace Object command to find and replicate symbols.
    • then there is a document linking scheme, combined with using symbols.
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  • N

    For anyone encountering this issue, here's a workaround workflow that abandons symbols and uses styled groups, object markers and transform each:

    Instead of making a symbol out of a deeply nested group

    • mark the group
      • open the "Selections" panel
      • click on the hamburger menu
      • select "Setup Markers"
      • create a marker
      • select the group
      • Select Menu > Markers > Object Marker > Choose marker
    • either
      • clone it ( currently to be avoided until bugs are fixed by @vectoradmin )
      • just make copies of it and rely on the nested styles for uniformity
    • Select Menu > Markers > Select Marker > Choose marker
    • all marked objects are selected
    • Object Menu > Transform > Scale > check "Transform Each" > select reference point > scale

    The benefit here is, as discussed above with @vectoradmin, that you now have symbol-like capabilities ( although using more memory as a disadvantage ) and can also use not only this better scaling, but make targeted overrides to some of multiple uses of the same style in deeply nested, styled groups.

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