Is there a way to "Instantiate" copy of transformed object in Illustrator?

[sPretzel]

Hi. Is there a way to "instantiate" the copy(ies) of an object when the copy is done through Transform FX? In other words, say I have an object I copy 2 times in Transform FX where I have applied a horizontal shift of 1 in. Can I turn those two copies into actual objects, as exact duplicates of the original object (to which the Transform FX was applied)?

The only way that comes close is via Expand Appearance but that creates altered copies of the original object, not exact copies. So it is not what I am looking for. By "altered copies", I mean for example that any live FX applied to the original object are expanded and not maintained as live FX when the copy is expanded.

This is for CS4 but answers for any version are welcome.

Thanks.

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[Monika Gause]

I do not understand a word.

[sPretzel]

Hi Monika. I will try to rephrase the example. I draw a line, that is my object. I then apply Transform FX to it, where I set a horizontal shift of +1 inch, and number of copies 2. The result will be one object. On the artboard however, I will have the original object, and two identical copies of the object spaced 1 inch to its right. What I would like is to somehow convert those two copies into objects in their own right. Those two objects must share all attributes of the original object they are copies of, including all FX, except for the "copy" part. This is what I mean by "instantiate".

I can see that this is going to be a problem, especially for Illustrator to determine what "copy" to keep in Transform FX and which to discard.

Expand Appearance creates visually the result I want. Each converted copy is now an editable oject, but the objects are no longer sharing the same attributes as the original object they copied (the converted original object is also not similar to the original object itself because it was expanded). Is that any clearer?

I could try German next if that is still not clear.  😉

[Monika Gause]

Thank you. It's clear now. 

Since it's not possible: what is the actual goal?

You will need to do it differently, Kurt Gold has suggested symbols.

Appearances on the layer could be another option, but then again: what is the broader situation you are in?

[sPretzel]

I wanted to have multiple copies on the page but didn't want to position them each manually. So doing everything via transform FX is convenient but doesn't allow me to later edit each copy if I want to, unless I expand appearance or in the case of symbols, unless I delink from the symbol.

[Monika Gause]

But then if you expand appearance all the single copies will stay where they are, so problem solved.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @sPretzel,

Thanks for reaching out. I understand what you mean about wanting to turn the Transform FX copies into actual editable objects without losing the live effects. At the moment, Illustrator does not provide a direct way to 'convert' those copies. The Expand Appearance option is the only method available, but as you noticed, it expands the effects and the duplicates no longer stay live. I understand that this functionality is important to you, and I apologize for its unavailability at this time. Would you mind creating a UserVoice for this feature request (https://adobe.ly/3JtESBP) and adding your comments there? Doing this will help us prioritize this request, and you will be notified of any updates.

Best,

Abhishek

[sPretzel]

Hi Abhishek. Thanks for your reply. It sounds as though you got what I meant. Perhaps some users, like Monika Gause, will be able to suggest useful alternative approaches however. I won't be making an entry in UserVoice though. That is Adobe's job, in my opinion.

[Kurt Gold]

As far as I understand, you may convert the original object (with all its live appearance attributes) to a symbol, then apply the Transform effect to the symbol.

Now you can expand appearance, break the link to the symbol instances and ungroup a couple of times. All duplicates should still have the attributes of the original object.

[sPretzel]

Hi Kurt. You're right, that is an option. In my case, I wanted to avoid symbols here because of other unrelated issues but perhaps I should reconsider.

[Kurt Gold]

I think I do understand your general request behind the sample case: You are looking for some kind of selective Expand Appearance command that does not flatten all appearance attributes. Instead only selected attributes should be expanded.

That could be pretty useful and I certainly would appreciate it as well. But I can imagine that technically it is not easy to implement.

Therefore, at least at the moment, you will have to rely on workarounds like the symbol route.

[sPretzel]

Kurt, you hit the nail on the head. And instead of "expanded", I would prefer that it keeps the attribute as it was in the original object. For example, expanding a rectangle results in two objects: one with the fill and one with the stroke. In the "instantiation" process, I would prefer to keep the rectangle as one object with a fill and a stroke.