How can I place multiple SVGs into a document and retain the SVG filenames after placement?

Question

I am in the process of recoloring an SVG icon set that has 155 separate SVGs.

When I place these SVGs into a new Illustrator document by shift+dragging them into Illustrator’s window, they all get placed inside the document as expected, but each SVG object gets a generic name like “<group>”. See this image:

This is a nightmare because I have to now rename all of the exported SVG files back to their original names after exporting my changes.

Does anyone here know of a way to place multiple SVG files into an Illustrator document and retain the SVG filenames?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Monika Gause · Accepted Answer

This can probably done by scripting.I have achieved it with some test files and the AI assistant in the Illustrator Beta. I have used only 4 test svg files, so I do not know whether 150 work. But you could try batches.The prompt:“Place the files from the folder “svg” on my desktop into this file and keep their names as names for the groups”the assistant then asked me for a list of the file names (which you can generate by copying them and placing into a text editor).When I gave it that list, the assistant imported the files and kept the names. For 150 files this might take some time.

Monika Gause · Answer

On reddit this has been posted:https://github.com/iconfinder/ai-merge

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