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phil123_123
Participant
November 3, 2016
Question

Symbol sprayer sprayed symbol size

  • November 3, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 2548 views

I irregularly use illustrator and have a question re sprayed symbol size.

Is there an option for the sprayed symbol to be the same size as the brush size?

If I change the size of the brush ( [  ] ), the sprayed symbol remains the same size. Currently, I spray first symbol, then change to brush resizer tool and resize symbol and then change back to sprayer tool to spray new size of symbol. This feels rather inefficient to me. Is there a better way (ie if I want to spray larger symbol can just tap ] until get right size and spray, but doesn't work)?

I have seen there is in the brush options a size field with either Average or User Defined, but doesn't seem to change much. What am I missing?

Thanks.

FYI, am using version 21.0.0 on windows.

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1 reply

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Kurt GoldCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 3, 2016

Assuming it is important for you to use the Symbol Sprayer, a save bet would be to first redefine the size of the original symbol (definition) according to the diameter in the Symbol Tool options.

Not very efficient as well, of course.

Can you describe your workflow a bit more elaborately? That is, for example, are you rather going to randomly spray symbol instances onto the scratch area or are you perhaps looking for something that may be called "precise symbol placement"?

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phil123_123Author
Participant
November 4, 2016

Thanks for your answer. Yes - redefining the original symbol makes a lot of sense, if not ideal.

My use case is probably rather niche - I'm a structural engineer looking at speeding up a lot of the quick sketching we do in the early concept stages of design when there is a lot of back and forth between us and the architects and other disciplines. We don't want to be doing full blown 3D CAD models or even 2D CAD work at those early stages and illustrator is ideal. I've started to get together a library of components and symbols. I currently have those in specific cc libraries which I place but at times (esp when marking up drawings from others - internal and external) I need to repetitively place symbols over different parts of a drawing. Saving these as Illustrator symbols and spraying them as needed over different parts of the drawing seems the way to go. Trouble is stuff that needs marking up comes in at different sizes, hence question re scaling the symbol (if I am creating sketch from scratch, symbol size isn't much of an issue as long as symbols are the right size proportionally to each other).

In short I guess "precise symbol placement".

I'm asking as if I can get a good library and workflow together, it may make it easier to persuade other engineers I work with to move from printing and hand marking up/ hand sketching to a more digital workflow (or the odd case where I've seen people sketch in powerpoint!!! - I think may be facing an uphill struggle there though ).

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