Working with Symbols

[coltapini]

I am trying to work a little with Symbols. There has to be a way to edit the contents of a symbol. I am not seeing it. Everywhere I go it seems to dead end with only being able to create or delete instances of a symbol, what am I missing here?

Particularly, to start of simply, I am trying to hide and show layers inside of a symbol object. It seems there would be something, maybe even a reference to a new document or something.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Larry G. Schneider]

There's a way to edit symbols in the GUI but not in scripting. Your only recourse is to make a symbol with each possibility and name them so you can keep track of which one you want to use in which instance.

[coltapini]

That is what I was afraid of. Sounds like I need to make it a plug-in instead of an extension. Thanks.

[moluapple]

How about:

1 duplicate an instance to new document, this also duplicate the symbol

2 remove the symbol so instance become editable objects

3 edit it and re-create the symbol

4 copy back to origin document and replace the symbol (everySymbolItem.symbol = newSymbol)

5 close new document, remove origin symbol, rename to origin name

[coltapini]

That would work, but I don't know how long that would take. If I have to run through 100 symbols to change layer states would that take too long?