Managing Assets in current Illustrator File

Question

I'm playing around with working with Assets in Adobe Illustrator CC 2017. I've run into an issue that I can't seem to figure out.

My issue is this:

• I drag a set of elements to the assets panel to save it as an asset, ready for export
• If I modify the shapes in the asset, the asset is updated as expected.
• I can't figure out how to add new shapes to the assets on the fly.

I tried: - grouping the shapes before adding to the assets panel. - Adding new shapes to the group. - Asset is not updating.

The only thing I can think of is creating a symbol, then making that an asset.

I've googled all around the internet and searched Adobe's forums. Maybe this feature is too new, but there doesn't seem to be any specific documentation that talks about auto updating current assets.

Any ideas? Anyone ever run into this issue?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

I think, that the only way to deal with this (other than symbols) is by creating new asset with the same name and removing the outdated one.

The other workaround may be to keep all of the assets on separate artboards (if it suits your workflow) and then to export artboards trough the same “Export for Screens” dialog. But you should remember that Illustrator only allows up to 100 artboards, and if you are working on a large icon set you are out of luck.