Symbols in Illustrator

Is this mainly added there to integrate with Flash better, or does it have a usefulness in AI also beyond just being able to place multiple copies on an Artboard?

StanWelks wrote:
Is this mainly added there to integrate with Flash better, or does it have a usefulness in AI also beyond just being able to place multiple copies on an Artboard?
It is for many reasons, one it makes it easier to edit art that has many copies of the same art all you have to do is edit the one symbol and all instances update. You can use the symbol in other documents when you save it to a symbol library and then when updated it will update to all those documents.
You can use it to place and instance break the link make an edit make a new symbol and go from there.
You can use the symbol tools to recolor, resize, and reorient the symbols without effecting the other instance and yet when editing the orignal symbol those adjusted symbols will also be updated.
This reduces the number of objects you will have in your layers panel as well if you simply made copies each copy of the art would show all the paths each time dso you will have a very hard to manage layers panel as well.
There are other benefits you just have to think about it.

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