Enable Illustrator to retain the filenames of placed SVGs or EPS files when shift+dragging them to the canvas from Explorer or Finder..
GOAL:
I am in the process of re-coloring an SVG icon set that has 155 separate SVGs, and I want to then re-export all the modified icons with their original filenames. Unfortunately this appears to be impossible because Illustrator just assigns generic "<group>" names to every placed object.
STEPS:
- I place all SVGs I want to recolor into a new document by shift+dragging them from windows explorer to my open document.
- After this action, all placed SVGs just get a generic name like “
<group>”.
See the image attached to this post. Or view the same image here
PROBLEM:
This is a nightmare, because I have to now rename all of the new SVG files back to their original names after exporting my changes.
PROPOSAL:
When shift+dragging external vector artwork (SVG, EPS, etc) to the canvas to place it in a document, Illustrator should NAME EACH PLACED FILE according to its actual filename on disk.
SIDE NOTE:
If Illustrator named each object that was placed to its original filename, the process of then renaming the artboards themselves to the correct filenames is easy, as there are multiple scripts out there that move objects to artboards and can rename artboards according to the names of the items that are moved.
See this script for one example: https://github.com/creold/illustrator-scripts/blob/master/jsx/FitSelectionToArtboards.jsx
This is just one of many scripts that can handle this.
CONCLUSION:
Please, please implement the ability to place multiple external vector artwork files with the ORIGINAL FILENAME INTACT.
Thank you for any consideration.
Joseph Sorensen
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