How do I relink attributes of symbols?

[seabirdr]

Randomly, symbol unlink attributes for me automately. To relink them, I have to delete them all and redo everything again. This is absolutely not cool. What I do is avoid using them from the beginning.

 

I believe this is a major bug that can't be fixed in the near future. Since this bug exist since the symbol is born, I eventually believe it is incurable, because it is a part of the symbol.

 

So I think poviding a method which can restore/relink the attributes of symbols will solve the problem without fixing the bug. 

[WaveF]

Symbol is so unstable that always turn into Group automatically

[havenyi]

反正这个symbol不好用！

[MEB]

Hi seabirdr,

There must be some action that you are performing that triggers the unlink behaviour at some point. If you discover what causes it and tell us the steps needed to make it happen we can fix it.

This behaviour shouln't be happening in first place. We need to fix the cause and not work around it.

[seabirdr]

On 2017/9/11 at 5:50 PM, MEB said:

Hi seabirdr,

There must be some action that you are performing that triggers the unlink behaviour at some point. If you discover what causes it and tell us the steps needed to make it happen we can fix it.

This behaviour shouln't be happening in first place. We need to fix the cause and not work around it.

 

I haven't found certain action that unlinks attributes of the symbols. But I'm certain it happen occasional since day 1 of my AD experience.

 

On the other hand, sometimes I unlink attributes deliberately and later I want the link back. How can I do it? I think relinking will be welcomed by many users.

[MEB]

Hi seabirdr,
Currently it's not possible to re-link specific attributes again. The only way is to drag the original symbol again and customize it according to the new requirements.

[daniele_orlando]

I can reproduce the bug in AD 1.6.1.

For me it happens with text with a Global Color placed inside a Symbol.

[rnbutler87]

I can reproduce it by inserting a symbol into a group and changing the groups stroke settings...

[RPC]

This bug just trashed a project I was working on.

I would like to suggested that even if there is no way to "re-link a given attribute" there needs to be someway to "restore to default symbol sate" so that we are not forced to "re-drag" the symbol because that can be an astronomical cost in time when the may work is positioning the default symbols.

 

[GuyMiklos]

I've just been having some unexpected behaviour from Symbols unlinking. I've spent much of this evening experimenting with different Symbol content trying to work out which attributes are linked and automatically update when a Symbol instance is changed. But due to unsolicited unlinking, I couldn't draw any definite conclusions, and instances that originally updated, stopped updating, and I have no idea when during the last 3 hours that happened. I might try to find what triggered the unlinking, but my priority is to finish a design project for a client, not look for the causes of erratic software behaviour. If I can offer any better information I will, but I learnt nothing more than that the Symbol feature is unreliable, and reduces to behave like an Asset if some unknown trigger(s) is tripped.

I was experimenting with bitmap fills with different scaling settings inside symbols. Perhaps they were a trigger for unlinking. 

Two memorable things that happened were 

1) I dragged a Symbol i2 onto a layer where another instance of the same Symbol i1 was. The new instance would not update the preexisting instance with a colour change. I tried again. The new instances i2, i3, had ended up inside the Symbol layer of the pre-existing Symbol i1, even though I am pretty sure I had selected the vector Layer where I wanted all the instance to be but separate. So there were two instances i2, i3, of a Symbol inside i1 of same Symbol. I moved them out to be at the same layer level as the Symbol they had been inside, so that all three instances were immediately inside the vector Layer. They still wouldn't update.

2) at some point when I right clicked on the Symbol group layer, a tooltip info box appeared stating something like "symbol instance unlinked attributes: colour, stroke, ..... " and about 10 other words. But the tooltip box disappeared before I had time to read it properly, and I couldn't get it to reappear. The key words "unlinked attributes" at least  helped me find this thread in the forum. 

I'm too tired to persue this now. Need some ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[GuyMiklos]

O C-R wrote:

"If you hover the pointer over the Sync button in the Symbols panel, you should get a tooltip explaining that editing properties while not synchronized will detach those properties from that instance of the symbol. Once detached in that instance, those properties cannot be relinked to the same properties of the 'master' symbol.

The builtin & online help does not explain this at all clearly. The only clues we get are the Sync tooltip & ones that appear when hovering over the names of symbol instances in the Layers panel that list unlinked attributes of that instance. (Annoyingly, hovering over the thumbnail doesn't show the tooltip; the pointer has to be over the symbol name.)"

Thank you O C-R

I realise now that my problems above were probably caused by my inadvertently pressing the Synch: symbol when I was intending only to access the burger menu a couple of milimeters away, and not noticing the change, because it IS barely noticable. 

How about writing "on" and "off" instead of barely perceptibly changing the background of the Synch: icon from light grey to slightly less light grey. 

It would be good if the orange colour used in the previous version of AffD. were restored to signal linking/unlinking. Synching can be very confusing when it isn't clearly signalled. There is insufficient support from the interface. Again sleek and trendy grey minimalism in symbol size, contrasts and colourlessness have made the interface less clear.

I'll revisit this tomorrow.

 

[loukash]

On 3/11/2021 at 10:32 PM, RPC said:

even if there is no way to "re-link a given attribute" there needs to be someway to "restore to default symbol sate" so that we are not forced to "re-drag" the symbol because that can be an astronomical cost in time when the may work is positioning the default symbols.

5 hours ago, GuyMiklos said:

"Once detached in that instance, those properties cannot be relinked to the same properties of the 'master' symbol."

If you have Photo, you can relink almost everything:

1. File > Edit In Photo
2. open the Links panel
3. select the detached object inside the affected Symbol group (the was the object with the dashed vertical line in Designer's Layers panel)
4. see the Links panel which attributes are detached
5. keep the selection, but drag one of the corresponding instances of the object to the detached attribute well in Links panel to relink that attribute (see affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/LayerOperations/linking.html on how linking works; it's a bit counterintuitive workflow that may require some "rehearsals" first…)
6. File > Edit In Designer to get back where you came from
7. voilà

ADe's Symbols, APh's Links and even APu's Master Pages obviously use the same underlying technology.