Disabling a symbol disables all

[shushustorm]

Hey everyone!

Not sure this is intended or not, but it would be great if one was able to disable select instances of a symbol and not all at once. I am trying to disable the instances, not its contents. Right now, I have to encapsule each instance within a group to be able to disable it.

I am using Designer 1.10.4, which may not be the most current version. I am rarely updating in order to keep workflow stability.
I searched for "disable symbol" and didn't find this issue.
Best wishes,
Shu

[walt.farrell]

By "disable" do you mean "hide"?

I think that Grouping the symbol is the only way to do what you want, as visibility is intended to be one of the linked attributes.

(Actually, you might be able to disable synchronization completely, hide one, and reenable synchronization. But Grouping is probably easier.

[shushustorm]

Thanks for the reply, @walt.farrell!

I mean unchecking the check so the Symbol isn't visible anymore.

Interesting idea about stopping syncing! That may very well work in some scenarios! Hiding a group is generally more straight forward, but:

- it creates unnecessary overhead, especially when using the symbol a lot and

- you always have to expand and collapse the group(s), which is continuous workload!

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

you always have to expand and collapse the group(s), which is continuous workload!

Or of curiosity, what are you doing to the symbol that you'd need to collapse or expand the group?

[shushustorm]

Let's say I have a tree with apples:

Tree

-> Apple (Group)

---> Apple (Symbol)

-> Apple (Group)

---> Apple (Symbol)

-> Apple (Group)

---> Apple (Symbol)

-> Apple (Group)

---> Apple (Symbol)

Now I want to disable some of the apples to focus more on the individual design. So I disable some groups. Now I want to change the Apples' shapes. So I need to expand Apple (Group), then Apple (Symbol) instead of just Apple (Symbol). And the same when collapsing later on. It just creates one unnecessary layer of abstraction that you always have to work through.

[walt.farrell]

If you want to change all the Apples' shapes, you would only have to expand one group. But yes, if you wanted to change several of them, but not all of them, you would have to expand each one that you wanted to change (as well as disabling Synchronization, of course).

[shushustorm]

Yes, I did mean "only" having to expand and collapse one apple, but it's some unnecessary boxing that you always have to fight through and that adds up quickly when you're working with a few hundred, and dozens of different, symbol instances that all are buried within different parts of the layer hierarchy. I just tried disabling the syncing process for disabling a symbol and it works flawlessly! That's great and possibly a nice solution for many scenarios!