Maintaining space of symbols and objects in a group

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1

I am unable to find a solution to maintaining consistant space between objects/groups/symbols when those symbols are in a group and i try to resize the group to adapt to a different screen size:

Example:

Sketch_spacing
Sketch_spacing965×849 46.4 KB

Is this possible with Sketch, i have looked online and found no similar issues being asked or any solution.

Thanks

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2

Hi @AACourt, there is a way to do this now.

Just space your layers as you normally would. Then:

  1. Apply Smart Layout to the group, choosing the layout direction you want. Note: you have to enable this feature via Sketch > Experimental Features.
  2. Select the layers you want to resize, not the group itself. Tip: I think the fastest way is to press Enter to dive into the group followed by ⌘A to select all its children.
  3. Resize, and the spacing will be maintained.

Here’s a demonstration:

Topic moved to the Ask the community section.

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3

Ah I see so you are only selecting the objects inside the group rather than the group itself.

May not solve the issue for my designers using symbols as I just checked and i’m unable to select the 2 symbols inside a parent symbol as there is no handle

2 child symbols inside parent symbol

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4

Understood, thanks for the insight on that. We’re discussing whether or not we want this behavior to happen when resizing the group itself. It seems obvious in this case, but we have to be careful and give it thorough consideration — changing this behavior may be a pretty substantial change that could affect cases where this may be undesirable and catch people by surprise. We’ll continue to discuss it.

5

Ah yes understandable, it could mean a major change.

We are spending a bit of time trying to be more efficient with our symbols to avoid users having lots of options for different screen sizes, we have reduced the number of many symbols thanks to the new Smart layout. But often get asked these questions by our team.

Thanks for the confirmation and your help, i will see what we can do with solution you shown in the mean time.

Appreciated

Andy

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6

Just want to back this up. For interface design this is critical and would save a tremendous number of symbols for responsive. It could be just a checkbox in resizing unchecked by default, if the issue is about people being used to the current behaviour

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