Unable to resize symbol object

[perrybrus]

I've imported a vector file from Illustrator via copy and paste. Then I made a symbol out of it but now I'm not able to scale or resize this object. All I get is a green bounding box with no handles. The object is not locked, grouped or anything. It's just not possible to scale it at all. I've tried with other vector files as well with same result. I'm on W10. And just to be in front: NO, there are no available updates for XD. And: YES. My OS is up to date.

[ankushr40215001]

Hey perrybrus,

Does it happen only with Illustrator files, did you try a photoshop file as well?

Can you please post a screenshot of the object after selecting, or best would be if you can share your Xd file itself.

For sharing the file you can use Creative Cloud or Dropbox.

Regards,

Ankush

[perrybrus]

I don't need bitmap files as symbols, only vectors. None of my vector symbols are possible to rescale. Dropbox is forbidden on my network (understandable) and CC cloud service is out of order, so unless Adobe makes it possible to attach their own file formats in this forum I can't share. Anyways, as I described all vector files made symbols loose scaling abilities. So, should we add bug nr. 2345336677 for XD? After all it really is the most buggy app Adobe has ever actually dared to launch. In my mind XD should be considered very much a beta product still. There are so many different things that doesn't work. This vector symbol rescale issue is just one out of many examples.

Heres are some other nice bugs in XD:

When I try to change the type size it's not possible to select the type size numbers. Not by any means.

When I try to change the border properties it's not possible to select the border properties. Not by any means.

When I try to change corner radius on any shape it suddenly switches to the opacity slider.

When I try to enter a text box I can't no matter how I click. Not by any means.

When I try to select text in a text box the whole text box often vanishes! What a magic trick.

When I try to edit a hexcode in the color section it formats what I have written after I close the dialog box.

I turned to a design college and asked him how he perceived XD on Windows and he shook his head and said he's back on Sketch for Mac combined with the trusted cross platform program Axure. I'm about to turn my back to XD myself now. It's just a never ending story of instabilities and lack of actual prototyping features. My colleagues say I'm way too patient writing this forum post even. Guess I'm a a fool.

Adobe: When are you gonna stop using your paying customers are crash test dummies and actually wait until your product is working before you launch it! That goes for any update as well, what about actually TRYING it yourself BEFORE launch? The CC concept is actually just a large release candidate experiments where Adobe launches something they don't know if actually works and then rely on the paying customers to sit here in the Forum and donate alot of feedback so you can get a crappy product evaluated as you go.

[jayyolk007]

Hi chap - just came across same problem with logo element. I tried just a simple square copied from Illustrator which was fine, so tried grouping elements within my vector logo and copied this to XD artboard, you should then get your resize handles....

[jayyolk007]

tell a lie - it seemed fine when copied from ai, but once converted to symbol just getting the green surround and have to double click which allows to resize separate ai elements, which is prob if vector file has separate elements within a group....

[jayyolk007]

Just following on from my previous comments, I would say best practice is to export any ai files to SVG, so still scalable and better for your developer to export out when in final coding.

Hope that helps

J

[perrybrus]

Nope. Still can't resize an imported SVG made symbol. So same problem as with eps and ai. There's no way around this and that makes it a very annoying bug. A word XD seems to be very afraid of using, but if it looks like a dog, barks like a dog and sounds like a dog - it probably is. And by the way, I also tried resizing bitmap files made symbols and that's also impossible. There's no handle bars on the container. Just this all so familiar green bounding box. The size properties are all greyed out too, so can't change the width and height numbers to resize it either. Swell.

[jayyolk007]

Have you tried double clicking the object, that worked for me, otherwise when a symbol you just get green surround box.

To put into context any asset you create as a symbol when scale will scale that everywhere else, so if say you just have a logo that appears once in your main header, I would recommend not creating a symbol, thats more for say navigation buttons or anything you want consistent across your site.

Hope that helps....

[perrybrus]

I have 25 instances of a logo in my project right now, it is very tiring to resize all of them manually so if the symbol concept has any purpose I should be able to edit them, both in size, color and position. No, double clicking a symbol doesn't solve this issue. Again, this must be a bug, one of quite many when it comes to XD.

[Preran]

I am not sure if I got this right, but does the solution from Elaine in this post Symbol Edit – Adobe XD Feedback : Feature Requests & Bugs help you?

Thanks,

Preran

[Lumberjack0325]

Hey, just found this out. Try double clicking! It worked for me.

[josuee2009241]

I had the same problem, what I did to be able to resize whole the symbol and not each individual pieces was:

1. Select the symbol
2. Right click and select Ungroup Symbol (Shift + Ctr + G)
3. Right click and select Group (Ctr + G)

Now if you select it again you should be able to scale it the way that you want to.

[iamxoph]

I know this is an old question, but I have to ask... How is this the answer? 

I have been trying to figure out how to resize symbol instances from day 1 with XD. This answer removes the selected object from the original symbol and makes it a unique object. It's no longer possible to make changes to the symbol and propagate changes to this "ungrouped" symbol.

Why, 2 years after initial release, is it still not possible to resize or override the dimensions of symbols.  This was my first requested feature as a beta user and the only reason I still do not use XD as my main UX design tool. I thought for sure, when the responsive resize feature was added that overrides would be next. Am I missing something?

[Kenneth Kawamoto]

Scale/resize symbols individually – Adobe XD Feedback : Feature Requests & Bugs

[iamxoph]

[hwang_xd]

I hear the frustration and definitely agree that it's something we need to address. This is something we are actively working on.

[iamxoph]

Thanks your quick reply!

Looking forward to this feature. As time moves on I was really starting to wonder if this was just a crutch that I was hanging on to while others had figured out something that I had not.

[VCStordy]

Please God Yes, fix this.... I'm gonna die!

And why can't I open non XD Files lin XD with right click?

XD does not show up an opttional executable program for most files... Please fix also (Windows 10)

[Peter Villevoye · Accepted solution]

Please clarify if you're still having the problem as mentioned in the discussion above your own answer, because it has been dealt with in recent versions ! Symbols are Components now, and easy to change by instance.

https://helpx.adobe.com/nl/xd/help/components.html

And about your other question, it might be better to start a new discussion for that topic. Please mention which kind of other files you're trying to open (not all file formats are applicable), because this request just leaves us guessing...

[waiel]

So, has there been any progress on the simple request to be able to scale symbols?? I'm astonished at how inferior XD is to Sketch. It's really shocking.

[Lumberjack0325]

It has been suggested by a few people. You might go back through and read through some of the suggestions and try again if you are still struggling with this.

[gavinbillings]

Just to update as per waiel​

To scale (or make any other change to) a symbol across all instances or projects, double click any instance of the symbol to enter the group and make changes as needed. To uniformly scale the whole symbol, once double-clicked in, use Ctrl + A to select all and then use the bounding box corners to resize.

To scale only one instance, right click the instance and select "Ungroup Symbol" (Shift + Ctrl + G) and make changes without affecting other instances of that symbol.

Remember that Adobe XD is still under development and features are being added, hence it being a free product.

[myriad_n8]

My issue was the way objects scaled oddly after I created a component out of a logo or artwork. And why does a group scale fine but a component doesn't?

Components should be a shared symbol across multiple projects especially now that you can use components from other XD docs so I didn't like the idea of breaking it into a group every time.

It took awhile but finally figured out that the issue I was having with multiple objects scaling differently was solved by the setup in Illustrator.

Here was my solution:

1. Open your logo or vector object back up in illustrator and create outlines on everything to become all artwork.
2. Ungroup everything to have all individual shapes
3. Select all your artwork again, then select "Object > Compound Path > Make"
4. Now copy and past or re-import your artwork back into XD and when you create a new component it should now scale properly.

Note: this works on single color shapes or logos. You can use the same method on multiple colored objects but need each color to be its own compound path, then In XD have to set manual responsive sizing to the individual elements to size properly.

[HARSHIKA_VERMA]

Thank you for sharing the solution that worked for you, Myriad_n8. This will definitely help our user to solve the problem. We really appreciate your presence here. Please feel free to reach out to us in the future for any query related to Adobe XD. We'd be happy to help.

Thanks,

Harshika

[VCStordy]

I think I fugured it out. It apparent to me now that boarders applied to vector lines do not resize an any program, even if responsive resize in XD is selected or not. 
The only solution i found for this has been to manualy decrease the boarder size after shrining down the SVG. 

As for the other question, I'll make a new discussion. But the point is, that windows 10 does not allow the option for executing non specific XD files in XD. The following workflow, for example is simply not an option
(right click file (eg. jpg) >> open >> adobe x)