I am creating an image in Illustrator that has a cornfield in the background. To make it, I created a cob of corn and some leaves and then rearranged these items and duplicated them over and over again. It has slowed my computer down to the point where it's near impossible to continue to work on the drawing.
Is there a way to "flatten" the corn field components into one image? I know there's a way to flatten layers into one, but obviously I don't want to do that to the entire drawing.
I've tried Googling, but all I see is stuff about flattening the entire drawing.