Dynamic symbols across documents?

+10000, it's hard to believe this functionality hasn't been built in. I wish the library + user defined symbols could be combined and work how the Figma components library works. 

Brontide  wrote It’s so utterly idiotic that I’m thinking Adobe cannot POSSIBLY have done it that way and clearly it must be that I’m missing something because who would come up with the awesomeness of dynamic symbols, and then not allow you to use them across documents? It’s madness.

If this were the default, it would drive me mad! I am trying to imagine reopening a document and finding the symbol had changed just because I had changed it in an unrelated document. If it were possible to have a choice as to which documents, that would be a good idea.

Dynamic symbols are a fairly recent development, and I do love them.

InDesign has the ability to copy and paste a link (which can be updated in the links panel) into the same document or into another document. Would that work if the Illustrator team could do it?

The place to post your idea for a new feature so that the engineers will read it and others can vote on it is User Voice. Here is the link:
Adobe Illustrator Feedback

Brontide,

It's an understandable assumption that so-called "libraries" are application-level assets, like document-shared asset libraries in a CAD program or server-shared assets in a database or something. But in Illustrator, they're not. They're just other ordinary Illustrator files. When you "open a library" (Symbols, Brushes, etc.), it's essentially the same thing as just opening another file, copying something from it, and pasting it into your current working document.

For example, as with most any graphics program, it's common practice to "Place" an external graphic file as an external link instead of as an embedded copy (as one commonly does an ordinary raster image) into multiple Illustrator documents. Thereafter, if that external document is edited in its native environment, then it will be updated (re-imported) whenever any of the AI documents that link to it are opened. But Symbols, Styles, etc., etc. don't work that way, despite their being called "libraries."

Yeah, if what you copy is a Symbol Instance (or a path with a Brush applied, or a Character or Paragraph style, etc.) then when you paste it into your current working file, it will be added to the receiving document's corresponding palette. But there is no application-level "connection" between what seems to be the "same" Symbol (or Brush or Style, etc.) used in the two documents. That's why, In fact, Illustrator has to provide "merge" or "add" alerts so you can determine what happens when the naming of the assets conflict.

It's the same way with Illustrator's so-called "templates." A "template" file is nothing but an ordinary Illustrator file that opens as an Untitled document. There is no application-level syncing between a file and the "template" which a user sometimes think's it's still going to be "based upon" after the new file is saved under a different name.

It's always been this way with Illustrator. And it's quite arguable that users (especially beginners) would be distraught if they edited an application-level Symbol, opened a previous document, and found that its content had changed. The problem is that (in typical Illustrator fashion), the interface implies there is more functional sophistication going on than really is.

All of the above assumes CS6 and previous. I don't rent mission-critical software, so I don't know (or much care) what has changed since the Cloudy Captives versions. But I doubt any of the above has changed.

JET

If you save a Dynamic symbol in a Symbols library, you can open that library in another Illustrator document by going to the Symbols panel flyout menu > Open Symbol Library > Other Library... and navigate to the .ai file where you have that library with the Dynamic symbol.