Renaming layers nightmare

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#1

Hi all,

I’ve noticed than when importing from Sketch, Principle detaches the symbols in folders with the items inside.

This is a nightmare as for example I tend to be very consisten when naming my symbols, so labels will always have the name ‘label’, a background will always be named ‘background’.

So when Principle imports all the symbols, it ends up with lots of layers called the same way as many of my symbols share elements like ‘label’ or ‘background’ to name a few, then Principle name all the inner elements of my symbols like ‘label 1’, ‘label 2’, ‘label 3’… and so on.

This has caused that what is ‘label 3’ in one artboard, rarely matches what is called ‘label 3’ in another, so unexpected things happen, and the renaming nightmare starts.

My suggestion would be that either Principle flattens the symbols but is not an ideal solution.

Another suggestion would be that if Principle reads a symbol named ‘button-dashboard’, its internal elements should be named ‘button-dashboard-label’, ‘button-dashboard-background’.

This way, if I pay attention to name every symbol correctly on Sketch, when I import to Principe, all the names will be consistent and no undesired repetitions will happen.

So basically an element inside a symbol will have: symbolname+layername creating truly unique layer names in Principle.

Otherwise is a waste of time that I spend time naming things correctly on Sketch if when I import to Principle, it’s going to create tons of duplicated layer names…

What are your thoughts on this? What’s your workaround about this issue?

#2

Yes this could be better.

For now, if you want to import a component as a single flattened layer, you can add “principleflatten” to the name of the component instance.

1 Like
#3

Thanks, I hope you can include a solution soon, will save ton of headache and time.

#4

Please please please, tackle this issue soon, it’s completely breaking what otherwise would be a quite efficient workflow! :frowning:

#5

Also, when adding ‘principleflatten’ to the layer, is not flattening the shadows, so it imports to principle the component without the shadows…

If I choose to flatten to bitmap from Sketch, then the imported bitmap to Principle looks pixelated.

There’s no way I can automate my workflow from Sketch to Principle without either:

  • Renaming tons of layers on Principle as components are broken down into layers and many matches will occur
  • Add ‘principleflatten’ individually to every layer on Sketch and losing any shadows I may have applied when importing to Principle (edit: some shadows are lost, some arent… ???)
  • Flattening in Sketch and exporting manually individual components at @2x in order to add them manually to Principle

All the options affect workflow hugely and none of them is actually good enough, so I have to choose the least of all evils which is not good at all.

#6

You can group many layers and put 'Principle flatten" in the group name. this will fix the shadow thing and require less renaming.

I’m going to lock this topic since I already said that I hope to fix it someday. If you have a different, specific issue, please create a new topic.

#7