Export assets has no logical relationship to layers or layer groups

[Dave_Draws]

I have an Illustrator file where I've carefully organized all my vectors into different layer groups.

However, when I go to "Export->Export For Screens..." and select the assets tab, the collections of assets offered seem to bear no logical relationship to layers, groups, or vectors that I can discern. Some of my layer groups are combined into single assets, some assets consist of single vectors embedded in layers. None of the names of the layers or objects carry over into the asset names.

I can select or deselect the offered assets, but I can't seem to do anything to replace or edit which layers or objects should be a part of what asset.

Is there something I need to do to designate which assets should be grouped together and control the export names?

[Myra Ferguson]

If the content on the layers (including groups but not the layers themselves) are named, dragging your assets to the Asset Export panel should preserve the groups and the names.

You can also hold down Alt (PC) or Option (macOS) when you drag ungrouped objects to the Asset Export panel to have the objects that you dragged exported as one asset, but the new combined asset will get a generated name.

[Dave_Draws · Accepted solution]

Thank you for responding.

I've come to realize that the confusion I was having was because the dialog windows that come up for "File->Export->Export for screens->Assets" and "Window->Asset Export" are different.

The instructions you provide apply in the "Window->Asset Export" interface, but do not seem to apply in the "File->Export->Export for screens->Assets" interface.

So it seems that in order to organize and prepare assets in terms of which objects are included and how they're named, one needs to use "Window->Asset Export".

"File->Export->Export for screens->Assets" is only for when you actually are ready to export and want more control over file type and sizes.

Of course, there's some overlap between the two, but I wish the documentation and online help made it cleat that these two dialogs exist and how they differ.