By Dani Beaumont
In the latest release of Adobe XD we've added the same powerful search and filter feature that we delivered in the Assets panel to the Layers panel. This can be incredibly useful when you're hunting through lots of nested content both within and across artboards. Once you get used to the feature, I think you're going to wonder how you did without it.
I'm working on an auto-animation and the way that works is you animate the same object between two artboards, but the name has to be exactly the same and as your project starts to get more complicated, it can be really tough trying to find a layer within a complex artboard.
Here on the right-hand side I 've got something called "Screen Pod" and I can see the name here, but I can't seem to find it on the left-hand side. So what I can do -- I can even be lazy here -- come in and copy that name. I'm going to now come up to this new Search field here towards the top and hit paste, and notice that I can quickly see that in the "Artboard 1" if I click here now, that I do have that screen pod, but the opacity is set to zero so I couldn't see it and it was hanging off the artboard.
In addition to being able to search for objects in the Layers panel. I can also filter for them as well. So if I come here and close out that initial search that I performed, notice that I've got the magnifying glass here on the left and it says all items with a carrot here on the right. If I go ahead and click on that carrot in the dropdown, I can filter the types of results I'd like to see so when I search for that word, I can limit it to images, shapes, or text.
You'll also notice that I've performed searches here in the past for "screen pod". I also searched for "Group 605" -- basically. I can come in and delete any of those previous searches and the last five that I've performed will be retained here in this menu until I close out this particular file.
Next up on our feature tour is improvements to symbol previews on the design canvas. I'm working with two documents here. I have a linked symbol Library here on the right-hand side and I'm bringing these symbols over into my active project here on the left. So I'm going to come in and select one of the symbols I have here and I'm just going to copy it onto the clipboard. I'll switch back over to that destination document and I'm going to select all of these artboards and paste that new symbol into place.
That looks pretty good, but I want to make an edit now. So I'm going to swing back to that first document and I'll come on in and change some pretty obvious details here just to make my point. I'm going to go to the fill color and select... let's just say a nicer shade of blue. And I'm actually going to come in and resize the container that this text sits inside of just to illustrate my point.
Now because both of these documents are cloud documents. I don't have to worry about keeping them in sync or hang onto the source document, it will automatically save in the background.
And when I switch back to my target document I get a notification that one of the symbols I'm working with has been updated. I see that here in the symbol icon here that little blue dot. If I click to bring up the Assets panel I can see that in the symbols area there is indeed a symbol that's been updated.
If I roll over the icon that indicates that the symbols been updated. I not only get a preview of that change in the Symbols panel, but I now get a real-time update to the actual symbols in my design on the design canvas here towards the right. Well, if you've not had a chance to check out the new linked symbol features whether you work on your own or with a team, I encourage you to give these new capabilities a try.
Quickly locate a design asset you want to update by searching for it in the Layers Panel. It’s easy to filter through the assets used in your XD project – you can search by image category, shape, and text – all from within the Layers panel.
