Ok....How do i do this?

Question

Hi,
I have asked in different threads but i think my question is hard to understand so i will try with pics and description to tease the idea and question out. I am fairly new to illustrator.
Ok here goes;
1.  I make a new document 3243px X 3243 and place an image of the same size
2. I scale the image up and embed
3. Create Object Mosaic 100 x 100 to make a pixelated look
4. >Object>Ungroup.  then select a single cell color
5. >Select>Same>Fill color
So my question is for each grouped color/shade I would like to replace with a symbol
Can anyone think of or recommend a way of doing this from this step?
If something is unclear please ask, i know my terminology is probable inprecise
thankyou for your help

Answer 1

...i think my question is hard to understand so i will try with pics...
There is nothing in the standard feature set to do what you want. But it can possibly be done by means of scripting, given a full description of the situation and the schema.
The problem in this and your previous posts is that you are leaving out information crucial to a practical scripted solution: How many Symbols are you using to replace the rectangles and what is the criteria by which the replacement is being made?
In both your posts, you keep refering to "colors." Scripting the replacement of a selected object with a Symbol Instance is fairly trivial. (And should be a standard feature of Symbols; why should the existing Replace Symbol command be limited to replacement of pre-existing Symbol Instances?)
But in just a grayscale image, you have the potential of having to select up to 256 different "colors." That's rather tedious. When you talk of "colors" the potential variants are much more numerous. So you should think through your schema a bit further and describe exactly what criteria you are using by which to decide which Symbol to use as the replacements for any given selection.
For example, in my own first script for such things, I use the grayscale value of the object to determine the scale of the replacing Instances of a single user-specified Symbol, thereby yielding a faux "halftone," which I find useful for a wide variety of effects:
In other scripts, I use the grayscale value to determine the probability of the replacement occuring at all, thereby achieving something akin to a diffusion dither made of Symbol Instances.
In both treatments, it is not necessary for me to make dozens or hundreds of manual selections because I write into the script the criteria used to determine the replacement. But when you talk of just "replacing colors," you're leaving it open to a very broad interpretation. How many "colors" are there in any potential image? Do you actually have enough different Symbols to correspond? By what criteria do you want to map a particular Symbol to a particular color?
Writing scripts takes time. A lot of tedium and a lot of testing. It's work. Scripts are very literal. Everything you want to occur has to be clearly and unambiguously specified.
That's why such questions often go unanswered.
JET