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Make symbols without placing them inside a container


Bruce Kieffer

Question

I've had an ongoing symbol discussion here:

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/50709-symbols-with-no-class/#comment-256964

 

That has led me to think there would be value to have the ability to make a symbol and not have it placed in a container. Here's what I'm doing: I have a new line of furniture called ThriftyCabinets.com. The main focus is creating plans for woodworkers. I've been trying to use symbols more lately to streamline my workflow. The cabinets I'm designing are component based, in other words cabinet sides, bottoms, stretchers are the same component throughout the entire line of furniture (for the most part). So I thought making a cabinet side symbol was a great solution. I'd place the cabinet side symbol as many times as needed in the drawing, and then if I needed to change some aspect of the cabinet side, I would do it in the symbol and all the other instances of the symbol would change. That is exactly how symbols work. The problem is the container has no info in the OIP and attributes palette. I cannot tell the size of the side or its color and line weight without drilling down into the edit 3d component each time. Sure there may be workarounds, but the best solution would be a container-less symbol.

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I suppose one solution would be to add tags to the symbols and then for the OIP to display the tags. There is certainly plenty of blank space.  It would be good though if the OIP could display a summary of the objects contained within a symbol. I mentioned somewhere else that a summary on objects within groups would also be really handy.

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1 hour ago, markdd said:

I suppose one solution would be to add tags to the symbols and then for the OIP to display the tags. There is certainly plenty of blank space.  It would be good though if the OIP could display a summary of the objects contained within a symbol. I mentioned somewhere else that a summary on objects within groups would also be really handy.

That is what I started to do, but the work to do that seemed greater than just duplicating the part in the file. I too agree that any group info that could be provided in the OIP would be helpful, like size and color type info.

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