TechNote (Archived)

FreeHand 8.0.1 groups and Flash symbols

Introduction
FreeHand 8.0.1 introduced the ability to export Flash movie files as Shockwave streaming audio (SWF) in which all the FreeHand groups had been converted into symbols. This made the exported SWF files much smaller, resulting in faster playback on the Web. Prior to FreeHand 8.0.1 the FreeHand SWF export contained no symbols, which increased file size and slowed playback.

These SWF files work fine on the Web. When these are imported into Flash, however, objects that were grouped in FreeHand do not translate into symbols in the Flash editor.

For example, consider a FreeHand file consisting of a single object used several times on one page - that object being a square, a circle and a triangle all in one group. That file is then exported as SWF. If you were building such a file in Flash you would build the parent object once as a symbol, then use multiple instances of the symbol on the stage.

So when the SWF of that FreeHand file is imported into Flash you might expect the group to import as a single symbol. But it does not. If you look at the symbol library after importing the SWF, you'll see that the Flash SWF importer breaks the parent group into three separate symbols: one for the square, one for the circle and one for the triangle. It then uses an instance of each of these symbols to replicate the appearance of your FreeHand file. None of the objects are grouped.

Effectively, this still gives you the size advantage of symbols. However, it makes using the objects in Flash more difficult.

Here are a few ideas for working around this behavior.

	Copy/Paste the items from FreeHand into a new symbol in Flash.
	Export from FreeHand as Adobe Illustrator and import into Flash.
	Select the symbol instances that made up the original group in FreeHand and group them into a Flash group
	Copy pieces from the existing Flash symbols into a new symbol that replicates the group